Chapter Eighteen: In the Middle of a Crowded Room
Look at us spinning out in
The madness of a roller coaster
You know you went off like a devil
In a church in the middle of a crowded room
All we can do, my love
Is hope we don't take this ship down
The space between where you're smiling high
Is where you'll find me if I get to go
The space between the bullets in our firefight
Is where I'll be hiding, waiting for you
Take my hand
'Cause we're walking out of here
Right out of here…
Dave Matthews Band-The Space Between.(edit)
Quistis was bored to death. She tapped a pencil against her teeth and crossed her ankles lightly under the table, wishing her shoes were low enough to slip off.
But no. I had to wear the boots, didn't I?
I'm bored. And I thought two days wasn't going to be long enough….
The rebels of the Children's Liberation Front had been polite enough once they got over the shock of her being both young and female. Quistis was aware of the unlikely figure she cut in their eyes, a lone woman clutching a scruffy rucksack and an outsize binder bursting at the seams with notes. Her blond hair was tucked up neatly into a businesslike twist, the cold intelligence in her eyes hidden behind stylish glasses.
There had been more than a few incredulous glances when she'd appeared at the rendezvous point. Over the last five years, Quistis had got very good at guessing what people were thinking.
This is it?
This is all they've sent us?
This girl…who's pulling the strings?
She got the impression that they'd expected her to be both more impressive and more male. Unfortunately there was absolutely nothing she could do about either, beyond severe knee-length skirts and the ever present spectacles. It didn't help that the SeeD female uniform resembled schoolwear, a fact that Quistis had always resented
I'd love five minutes alone with whoever thought that one up. Five minutes alone with me, Save The Queen and maybe a spoon..
Probably Cid…
The stares and bashful glances she got from the younger men were painfully predictable. The amused condescension she received from the older rebels of both sexes was more of a challenge. To be fair, their 'go home and give-up, little girl' attitude had frayed badly as the negotiations progressed and they discovered she was just as much SeeD as anything else.
In between endless talking, presentations and discussions, she'd been given food and a place to sleep, though with customary SeeD caution she'd barely accepted either. During the rare breaks she'd attempted to strike up a conversation with a couple of the younger members of the group, but all that had got her was a few frightened stares.
Quistis looked round the room and thought longingly of the sun outside the bleak walls. During the previous forty eight hours she had memorised every detail of its layout, with particular attention paid to the entry and exit points. It was bare, but clean, the negotiating table a motley assortment of hospital desks dragged together.
There was a skylight in the roof that should have let a lot of light through. It didn't, partly because it was choked with dead leaves, mould and dust and partly because the surrounding storeys of the building rose up to each side, placing the window at the bottom of a deep gloomy well. There was a long crack running across the glass, left to right. From the quality of the light that did get through, it was late afternoon. The second day Quistis had spent in the hospital.
It had been a wearing two days that had so far borne precious little fruit and she was heartily glad that the time limit for the talks was only a couple of hours away from running out. Time out, and as far as she was concerned, time wasted. Her binder had doubled in size from all the promotional materials the rebels had handed out, mostly badly photocopied pamphlets with hastily scribbled blanks to fill in the details, yet all of Quistis' carefully phrased and pointed arguments to the tune of 'so, why exactly should we do what you want anyway?' were turned casually yet inexorably aside with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. She tried to convince herself that it was a learning experience.
An education, really. I've sat in on lots of peace talks and I've seen people bluff with bad hands, but I've never met a bunch of people who kept bluffing with no cards…
She'd done her best, anyway. And Quistis' best was very good by any standards. But she was increasingly getting the feeling that no matter what she said, the CLA wasn't going to compromise. She'd tried her best to search for aces up the rebels' sleeves, and found nothing except an irritating air of smug confidence.
It was beginning to annoy her.
Children's Liberation Front, huh? Front for what?
After all, she'd attended enough negotiations to know exactly how these things were supposed to go. You made an offer, the other party made one of their own, and the real work lay in drawing a line that met somewhere in between.
This lot weren't taking 'no' for an answer. It was 'No more Gardens' or nothing.
She was extremely curious as to what exactly they thought they had to bargain with and had tried her best to imply that shutting down all the Gardens really wasn't an option, concealing the steel fist of sheer power in the velvet glove of diplomacy.
Annoy the most powerful private military force in the world, give them good reason to retaliate, and the old hospital could be incinerated in an instant with one blast of the Ragnarok's main guns, leaving the CLA both extremely dead and, unfortunately, extremely vindicated, which meant that the forceful option was out.
Quistis usually advocated the 'softly, softly' option of any plan but she was beginning to think that the Children's Liberation Front wouldn't recognise a gentle hint if it was dropped on their collective heads.
She glanced round the table, counting the negotiators. Five men, two women, four out of the seven with their features carefully hidden beneath black balaclavas that Quistis envied, if only because they could yawn as much as they wanted and she couldn't see. From the neck downwards they were dressed in an odd assortment of casual clothes that made clear their disparate origins. The leader, a burly man dressed in a V-necked jumper that would have looked more at home in some exclusive yachting club, was referred to only as 'Sir.' One pair wore boiler suits, the small woman next to them dressed in a polo shirt and jeans. Two other men wore fake military fatigues. Other people came and went independently through one of the room's two exits. They kept their distance and watched her with a mixture of barely-suppressed hostility and awe.
They seemed to be finding the negotiations much more interesting than she was.
Quistis stretched, yawned unobtrusively behind a closed fist and tried to avoid glancing at her watch, returning her attention to the topic of their conversation.
One of the boiler-suit clad rebels was giving an extremely long lecture on the joys of freedom of speech, self-publishing of pamphlets and attacking military targets with large explosive devices. He'd been talking for over forty five minutes already and showed no sign of giving up. Occasionally Quistis would add a comment of her own which would sink helplessly under the weight of propaganda and rhetoric issuing from the man's mouth. She'd given up arguing every point after the first heated fifteen minutes and was busy planning her own speech in response, on the advantages of private military companies, very nearly cheap professional services and dealing swiftly and harshly with anybody who dared use terrorist tactics against the Gardens.
Her gaze strayed to the grimy silhouettes of a few bedraggled pigeons nesting in the rafters of the huge barnlike conference room. One of them fluffed its feathers and yawned, revealing long and surprisingly sharp teeth. Quistis jerked her attention back to the speaker.
"…and, as I said, any government who relies on private companies to do its own dirty work …"
She tapped her fingers on the table, making the man jump, glance round and pause in his speech just long enough for her to speak. "Rather than quietly employing the army to do the same for them."
"It's not the same."
Quistis sighed and folded her arms, surreptitiously checking her watch at the same time. "You pay the army. It's called 'taxes.' You pay us, too. It's just more direct."
"That's as may be, but if you were working for the government it would be different."
"We do work for the governments." Quistis pointed out. The truth was that the SeeDs worked for almost anyone, providing that they were very very rich or in some way deserving and the jobs didn't contravene any of the major laws, religious commandments or both.
"But what revenue you earn goes straight back into your organisation."
"That's because we're privately funded." Ever considered the meaning of 'mercenaries'? Ye gods…
Quistis was fully aware that she was gifted, in an average child-prodigy sort of way, and she was used to being at least a few degrees smarter than the rest of the room, but this was the first time she'd been made to feel that whole mountain ranges of stupidity lay between them and her.
What part of 'we don't even have to cough to wipe you off the face of the map' don't you understand?' And when I say "wiped off the map", I mean reduced to so much rubble that your chief export is brick dust. Except that we can't actually nuke you without your claims being proved right.
Dead right.
Dead
I'm so dead.
Nia tried not to think about it. She told herself firmly that everybody died some time and if anything happened her blood would be shed for a worthy cause. The phrase 'blood of the martyrs' had featured heavily in most of Asbel's speeches. This was fine with her. She'd just never planned on being one of them.
Her imagination seemed treacherously good at bringing up images of gruesome slaughter. The thought of death terrified her, not the pain, although that was bad enough, but the thought of…not being there. It was one of the scariest things she could possibly think of, though at the moment nearly being squashed by a rampaging Ruby Dragon and then having some deranged madman point a gun at her was running a close second.
She tried to comfort herself with the fact that he couldn't kill her until they'd reached the base. It didn't really work.
He can always shoot me and then go in the direction my cold dead body's pointing in. He knows which is the right floor now, at least.
Her entire body felt frozen with fear, her thoughts slightly dissociated from reality. Silver flecks sparkled at the edge of her vision, giving her a strange sense of vertigo to go with a growing feeling of inadequacy.
We're going to get found out. And it's all my fault. Is it illegal?Is what we're doing wrong?
I didn't bomb anyone…This isn't fair.
She couldn't help thinking that if she was in a movie then she'd have done something intelligent, brave and incredibly stupid instead of just doing what the intruder said like a dumb farm animal destined for slaughter. A sacrificial lamb, maybe. Although Nia was, in principle at least, in favour of dying for a cause, the specifics were starting to worry her slightly. After all, you only got one life, and causes were ten a penny…
I think I should have considered this before I came anywhere near a lunatic with a gun.
It felt rather like shutting the stable door after the horse had run gleefully out, flicking its tail and making a V sign with its hooves. The adrenaline of the fight had long since dissipated, leaving her jumpy but exhausted, images playing over and over in her mind in constant action replay interspersed by oddly normal, regular thoughts.
I have to pick Fio up in an hour. She'll be wondering where I've got to. They'll charge me extra if she stays after five..
This is assuming I'm still alive at five o clock….
The walls passed her by as if in a dream, a waking hallucination. As they neared the base the silence was replaced by the clink of heating pipes and cooling fans, their noises slightly muffled. Nia blew quietly at her hair as it straggled into her eyes. She would have raised one hand to scrape the stray wisps back into her braids but she didn't want to move to fast, just in case the man behind her had an itchy trigger finger.
"Are we there yet?"
Nia risked a glance round. "Nearly."
He followed after her, eyes alert, posture as guarded as any good sheepdog. He would have been handsome in a cruel kind of way under the ash and smoke and blood, given several baths, a change of clothes, a shave and a haircut. Handsome, but way too white for her taste, and oddly familiar, as if he was somebody's son or brother or something.
Apart from the gun, he'd treated her with totally unsympathetic condescension. She would have understood it if he'd been threatening, but apart from the pistol pointed in her general direction with an unerring aim that bordered on the supernatural, he didn't seem that worried about what she might do.
Despite this, she got the feeling that he'd attack her just as fast as the Ruby Dragon if she got in his way. Not with any particular malice, but a sharp ruthlessness that gave no quarter and asked for none in return.
Faster. It's got four legs to sort out and no military training, after all.
A voice drifted up from the ventilation shafts as they neared the base. "The SeeD? No, I don't like her."
"Stop."
She came to a slow halt a metre past the shaft. It was covered with a metal grate, the people below invisible and only faintly audible. Nia did a quick calculation in her head and worked out that they must be over the common room. The intruder walked over to the wall and stood next to the grate, cocking his head to try and get a clear view down the shaft. He paid no attention to Nia, but the gun remained steadily pointed in her direction.
The man below them laughed. His voice had the wavery edge of an adolescent, shifting between high and low pitches. "I don't like her. But she may be the hottest girl I've seen in my entire life. And I have cable."
"Mmm-hmm."
Her captor smiled, slightly.
Nia hoped for a second that the noises had carried their footsteps down to the two men talking, and than gave up as they carried on their conversation. No one was coming. The topic of conversation changed to the local team's football scores and then faded away as the men finished their break and moved on.
She rested awkwardly against the wall and wondered what would happen to her if she shouted.
Nothing good, she had to admit.
She swallowed and tried pushing her luck. All the cop shows and kidnapper movies she'd even seen told you to try and strike up a bond with your attackers, so if the crunch came and they knew your name, talked to you even a little bit, they'd be that little bit less eager to do something you and they would no doubt regret.
"What do you want the SeeD for anyway?"
The man turned towards her almost in surprise and scratched between his eyes at a faint pale line. They were the first unsolicited words she'd spoken to him since they'd met.
"None of your business." He spoke quietly but didn't seem particularly angry. At least, nothing bad had happened to her yet.
"You're not a SeeD? Really?"
"Strictly freelance."
This worried her even more. At least SeeDs were supposed to have morals, even if they charged highly for them.
"We're here."
"Right. Shut up."
"Let's wind this up."
Thank Hyne, Quistis thought. She stole a glance at the microphone of the radio transmitter, hoping that whoever was monitoring the conversation on the other end was just as bored as she was. She cleared her throat and said "I stick with what I've been saying throughout. It's really not practical to abolish the Gardens. Nor is turning them over to the public sector a viable option, and, as far as recruiting children goes, they can leave at any time. We need the revenue from our jobs to maintain the same high standards of service that we've founded our reputations on. I think the private individuals who founded the Gardens and put so much of their time and money into maintaining them would dismiss your arguments out of hand."
The balaclava'd leader closed his own folder with a slam. He replied "I appreciate your courtesy. I'd like to help you, I really would. You seem like such a nice person to me."
Quistis had to choke back a smile. Liar. Yeah, right, she thought. The man had been annoying the hell out of her for the last forty eight hours, so it was a fair bet that she was pissing him off at least as much. What with the mask, it was hard to guess his thoughts. He didn't scratch his nose or pinch his ear or cross his arms. In fact, he made none of the involuntary movements that the SeeDs were well trained to pick up. She'd seen more life in shop dummies.
The leader continued his speech, oblivious to her thoughts. ".. But we will accept no alternatives and have nothing to offer if you refuse to meet with our requests. Discussion is pointless and I…"
There was a wordless shout, followed by the sound of footsteps. The leader fell silent. His head moved slightly, focusing on one of the conference room's two doors. Quistis swivelled round in her own seat.
The door opened, behind her.
A teenage boy backed slowly into the room, gun held out in front of him in the kind of stylish and flamboyant pose that beginners tended to use just before they got skewered by an older and more experienced fighter. It was shaking so much that Quistis privately thought he had a better chance of hitting his foot than his target. She frowned.
The leader, across the table, stood up, pushing the folder away from him into the middle of the table. "What in Hyne's name is going on back there?"
There was a crash, a frightened whimper and then the sound of a familiar voice. "Looking good. Might be an idea to take the safety off, though. Now stop pointing that at me before I do something nasty."
The boy backed slowly a few more steps and risked a wild glance round at the assembled people before his hands trembled and fell. He dropped the gun, which skittered across the floor, and took off running to the other side of the room, half falling into the assembled crowd.
Everybody else took a step back.
Quistis sat bolt upright in her chair. "Seifer?"
"Quistis?"
Quistis had never been more disappointed to discover she was right.
Seifer stood framed in the doorway, clothes and skin streaked with ash, his body language subtly threatening. This was mostly due to the fact that his right hand held a small ugly pistol, held jammed into the ribs of a small dark skinned woman standing in front of him, a stranger. His left hand rested lightly against the doorframe, stance combat balanced and textbook-perfect.
Quistis suddenly recalled that her mouth was hanging open in surprise. She shut it, quickly, already frantically trying to decide how to turn the situation to her best advantage. Within one second she'd considered and rejected at least forty different hypotheses, the most positive being 'maybe, if I'm very careful, just maybe we can both get out of this without getting killed'. It was not a conclusion she was happy with.
Seifer's eyes flicked to her and his expression changed subtly into something slightly less threatening. By his standards this was vast relief.
His voice was rough, as if he'd been smoking too many cigarettes. "Hey..You're all right?"
Quistis found herself nodding briefly before she stopped herself, face aghast.
This is bad…
No. It's worse.
She wondered if Xu had picked up on the transmission yet. The radio waves were notoriously unreliable.
The rebels stood like statues round the edge of the room, their gazes moving from face to face, tracking Quistis' frown, Seifer's scowl, and his hostage's expression of sheer pant-wetting terror. The seated negotiators that surrounded her all seemed at a loss for words, but she guessed it was only a matter of time before questions started to be asked. Questions she didn't even want to admit to herself.
Quistis slipped one hand surreptitiously under the table to fumble with the clasp of her small rucksack. The clip opened with barely a sound and her fingers touched Save The Queen inside, slick leather and chain coiled like a sleeping snake.
She asked the obvious question. "What are you doing here?"
"Me? You've been here for ages." Seifer's eyes moved over her, scrutinising her carefully as if he was expecting blood. His face was a mask of soot, the whites of his eyes reddened. The knees were ripped out of both of the legs of his jeans and there was a deep graze sprawling along one cheekbone. The clothes of the small woman in his arms were piebald with dirt, a long stain of drying green ichor striping her shirt.
Quistis hoped that her tone of voice wasn't as horrified as she felt. "I'm concluding the negotiations. What did you think I was doing?"
She was slightly concerned. Surely Seifer wouldn't have turned up just to collect her? It was slightly too dramatic even for him, not to mention suicidal. Despite all the CLA's assertions of semi-peaceful protest, she was pretty sure that several were packing weapons.
Either something's going on here, or he's just committed the cardinal sin of relationships: trying to protect me..
The frown between her eyes deepened and she pushed her spectacles up her nose, scratching at the spots either side of her nose where the nosepiece rubbed.
The thought that Seifer might think she needed looking after rankled and made her words more clipped than she'd intended. "When I need your help I'll ask for it."
Seifer smirked, and said, quite seriously, "See you soon, then."
Quistis narrowed her eyes. Beneath Seifer's usual veneer of brash aggression and ever present anger he looked worried. Worried, and, maybe, less protective of his pride than she'd ever seen him before.
What do you know that I don't? Whatever it is, I doubt that I'm going to like it much….
Around her the other inhabitants of the room finally caught up to speed.
The nameless leader was the first to act. He rapped out a crisp question in the manner of somebody who expected to be answered and simultaneously held up one arm.
"What is going on here?"
Several of the more well-built members of the CLA stepped forwards from the growing crowd, and then hesitated as Seifer brought the pistol up to bear on the throat on the small woman in his arms. He wasn't holding her, didn't have to, because the woman looked frozen to the spot by sheer terror. He shook his head, slightly. "Whoa."
Quistis had an acute feeling of déjà vu.
Now what does this remind me of? Does he think people won't listen to him unless he's holding one of their friends at gunpoint?
To make things worse, there was the same sense that events were careering rapidly out of control that she'd had in Timber all those years ago…
I don't believe this is happening to me…
Her voice was a venomous whisper. "What in Hyne's name do you think you're doing?
Seifer scowled. "What do you mean, what am I doing? What have you been doing? I got arrested."
Quistis raised one eyebrow in a gesture designed to illustrate less than overwhelming surprise. She said "That isn't anything to do with me. What have you been up to?"
Nothing good, from the look of it…not that that surprises me…I'm betting the fighting, the drinking, the refusal to pay rent, the concealed weapons or the homicidal impulses… The usual.
And the winner of the dead-person whose-grave-has-been-spat-on-the-most-times-award is…..
The radio hissed in the background, Overhead, the skylight darkened for a second as a cloud passed over the sun. It cast Seifer's face in deep shadow, his profile knife-sharp as he flicked cautious glances to the petrified members of the CLA to each side. He raised his free hand from the doorframe long enough to wipe at his face. The movement didn't so much remove the dirt as spread it around, giving it a brief holiday. "It was you. You left bloody guns. In your room."
Quistis felt a deep blush begin to suffuse her cheeks. Whatever she'd been expecting, it wasn't the answer she'd just been given. She wasn't quite sure what she'd been expecting, certainly not a reply on the lines of 'I couldn't live without you for more than forty-eight hours without getting withdrawal', but she'd never considered that Seifer's sudden appearance might somehow be her fault. She schooled her expression to a carefully blank mask, out of habit. "I what?"
Seifer sighed as if the answer was blindingly obvious and Quistis was just being dense. "When you caught the train here you must have left something in your room. Some kind of weapons. The damn receptionist found it and had the police haul me in from questioning…and I dunno, there was something wrong."
"Apart from you being in jail." Quistis said, stating the obvious.
"Right."
The faces of the assembled rebels were starting to get on Quistis' nerves, as their gaze moved from one speaker to the other like the spectators at a verbal tennis match. The faces of the unmasked negotiators looked almost as puzzled as she felt.
I have to get him out of here…this is going wrong…..and I still don't have a clue what he's talking about. Did I leave stuff in the room? Well, it was late, and I was tired..I guess I might have done..
Seifer read the blank look on her face. "Okay, just answer one question and I'll go away. Did you know these fuckers have a whole load of weapons hidden back there?" He jerked his head curtly behind him.
There was a collective intake of breath from around the room.
Seifer glanced challengingly at the assembled rebels and yanked a small revolver from the back of his jeans. He tossed it onto the table, watching Quistis carefully as the gun skidded down the desks towards her.
The sinking feeling in Quistis' stomach deepened into a horrible dark pit. She let her gaze slide over the weapon, noting condition, make and the lack of any serial number before she palmed the gun. "What kind of weapons?"
Seifer shrugged. "All sorts. Guns, knives. Oh yeah, explosives, too. Thought that'd interest you. Enough for a small army "
Quistis' gaze swung from Seifer to the leader, whose ski mask gave away exactly none of his expression. "Is this true?"
Military intelligence. What an oxymoron.
"We never denied that we're prepared to use force if necessary." The leader pointed out, blandly. He motioned to the gun in Quistis' palm and said "I hope you're going to return that."
She replied with a don't-push-your-luck glare and swung back in her seat to face the assembled leaders of the resistance group. "What is the point of negotiations if you're not even going to listen? Hyne. Weapons. Illegal weapons."
One of the female negotiators shrugged "We said we bombed Garden, what did you expect to have? Small fluffy kittens, perhaps?"
"You're sure about the weapons" Quistis addressed Seifer, ignoring the sarcasm. She slipped the gun unobtrusively in her bag, hoping that nobody noticed. Evidence, in the increasingly unlikely chance that she made it back to Balamb.
"Oh, yeah."
"It was locked!" someone else pointed out.
Seifer grinned, smile pale in his filthy face. "Not any more."
Quistis had almost forgotten about the assembled resistance members. The leader's voice made her jump.
"You're trespassing. And disrupting the proceedings." The balaclava turned towards Seifer. His voice was cold and even, with none of the panic or guilt that she might have expected.
"You want me to throw him out?" said one of the slower on the uptake thugs
Now there's an experiment I wouldn't want to miss…Quistis thought grimly.
The leader held up a hand and gave Seifer a sharp and assessing look through the knitted eyeslits of his ski mask. "No."
He sounded oddly certain. Quistis thought cynically that if she was him, she'd have wanted Seifer out of the way as fast as possible. Seifer looked faintly surprised, but returned the man's glare with interest and faint scorn.
Quistis spoke over her shoulder at the radio. "Xu? Are you getting this?" She snapped at the nearest teen recruits who had one arm stretched out halfway towards one of the knobs. "Don't touch that dial."
The radio returned a hiss of static. Quistis couldn't work out whether that was a good or bad thing. She rested her head in the palms of her hands, linking her wrists under her chin, and tried to work out what to do.
What a disaster…
The assembled masses of the CLA watched Seifer with wary fear.
"Is he a diplomat?" someone asked cautiously. They sounded too young to be there, but she couldn't make out the speaker.
Quistis sighed. "No. He's the reason for diplomacy. It's best to think of him as an independent weapon."
"That's a SeeD?" one of the rebels asked incredulously. Quistis couldn't blame him. Not only did Seifer look as though he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards, the hedge had, apparently been on fire.
"No." It's not. Oh, so not.
One of the smaller rebels glanced from Quistis to Seifer and back again, obviously comparing reference notes. "No way."
She could understand their confusion. SeeDs fought the bad guys. Seifer at his best of times was barely better than the bad guys. And this was definitely not one of his best times. Quistis had the feeling that she was fast slipping into murky moral waters, the high ground receding under her feet as she struggled to stay upright.
"I think he is…" the leader said slowly, as if he was trying to work something out.
Quistis ran her mind back over their conversation and mentally winced.
"Looking good. Might be an idea to take the safety off, though. Now stop pointing that at me before I do something nasty."
"Seifer?"
..and then he asked if I was all right and said I'd been here for ages…I guess I have been…
It was me. I blew his cover. Oh, Hyne.
A SeeD? Dressed like that? You have to be kidding."
Quistis crossed her fingers under her chin. Seifer unconsciously touched his left hand to his face, scratching absently at his scar for a second before he realised what he was doing and lowered the hand irritably. His right hand moved upwards, the sleek silver revolver tracing upwards to press hard into the cheekbone of the paralysed woman standing in front of him. Her head reached his collarbone. She shook slightly, teeth biting her lower lips hard enough to draw blood.
The leader suddenly clicked his fingers as if he'd solved a particularly hard crossword puzzle. "You're that guy. All-masy." He sounded faintly triumphant at this deduction. Quistis thought sourly that she hadn't exactly made it hard for him.
"Almasy. At least pronounce it right." Seifer didn't sound particularly surprised. She guessed that he'd been replaying this moment in his head for a long time.
"Seifer Almasy? Was Hell full up or something?"
Seifer looked down at himself with a wry grin. "Nah. But they had a dress code."
"You're not dead." the female half of the boiler-suited couple chipped in.
"Not yet. Sorry if that's a problem for you." He didn't sound it.
"Didn't you..?"
"Yeah. Probably." Seifer smiled sharkishly, a slight taunting note just audible in his voice.
"You were with that sorceress." commented someone else. The other door opened, warily, as more people flooded in the room, in twos and threes. The word had spread quickly. It must have spread equally quickly that entering through the door blocked by Seifer and his hostage was a Very Bad Idea, in capitals, as nobody tried to push past.
The tension in the air gathered.
"Didn't you try to bomb Balamb?.." One of the younger cadets was staring up at him with what might have been hero-worship in his eyes.
"Didn't you die a year ago?" someone more pragmatically asked.
Seifer sighed. "Yes, yes, and no. Since I'm obviously here. Not bad, Quistis. It only took them five minutes and it's been taking everybody else two fucking years to figure out who I am.."
He didn't add, thanks to you. He didn't have to.
The leader didn't appear to be dismayed. "Quiet." He turned to Quistis. "So you're not a SeeD?"
Quistis hesitated, trying to work out exactly what the man was thinking and what kind of conclusions he was coming to.
"Oh, she is." Seifer said grimly.
The balaclava turned from one to the other, and then stopped, pointing at Quistis, like a game of spin-the-bottle.
"You're a SeeD, but you must have known he wasn't dead all along. You didn't look surprised at all. Are you working for the sorceress? Against the Gardens?"
There was a silent pause as Quistis suddenly realised what particular conclusion the man had jumped to. She wasn't surprised that he was confused, after all it had taken her long enough to come to terms with the idea of Seifer still being alive, and even longer for her to be okay with that fact.
He thinks I'm a traitor…and to top that he's just assuming Seifer's still doing what he did in the wars…and I'm somehow working with him.
Interesting. Wrong, but interesting.
She sighed. "Ultimecia's dead."
"I'm not working for anyone." Seifer broke in, half-indignantly. He shifted, slightly, easing the grip off on the gun. His hostage stayed where she was, eyes staring straight ahead with the blind animal-fear of someone who didn't expect to survive.
I knew this relationship thing was going to cause trouble. No amount of mind-blowing sex is worth this amount of baggage… Quistis thought, cynically.
The leader steepled both hands on the table top and peered at them all from over his interlaced fingertips. "But if you're working together, then you." he stabbed a finger at her, "are not really a Balamb agent. You're like us?"
When Quistis answered it was as much to sort the situation out in her own mind as his. "Believe it or not, this has absolutely nothing to do with these negotiations. I fought the sorceress. I am here purely as a Balamb operative trying to sort out our problems" "
She gave Seifer an evil glare over her spectacles. "Or I was."
He looked innocent, or as innocent as a six-foot-two man carrying more weaponry than the average stormtrooper could look. "I thought you were in trouble."
Quistis' hand reached inside her bag and closed on her whip as she said "Congratulations, I am now." She touched the stolen gun and then decided on the more familiar weapon.
"So what are you doing with him?" the boiler suited woman asked.
"It's complicated." Quistis was painfully aware that it would be complicated enough trying to explain it to her friends, people who knew both her and Seifer. Trying to explain their misbegotten excuse for a relationship to anybody else would be near-impossible, probably requiring line diagrams, graph paper and several hours.
"I'll bet it is." The speaker looked more interested than hostile. Quistis counted that as a plus.
The leader coughed, back on track again. "So if I made you an offer…you're trying to bring down Garden?"
"No! I'm here on Garden business."
The man looked at Seifer, who shrugged with one shoulder. "I'm with her."
"Well, this makes our job a whole lot simpler. It's no secret that we were behind the Balamb attack…"
Quistis hissed in an indrawn breath. It was the first time anyone had alluded so bluntly to the bomb in their liaison. The topic had been skirted round with a kind of undiscussed delicacy. Nobody had actually admitted to anything…and now here they were.
She hoped Xu was picking up the radio. Selective transmission, that would be the key to explaining all this when she got back….As long as the "Seifer?!" bit was missed, the rest could probably be put down to static noise.
The leader picked up a pen, doodling idly on a stray piece of notepaper. "You go back to Garden and persuade them to accept our terms…or we tell Balamb that he's here. We seem to be having a small problem with out transmitter but I assure you it will be fixed momentarily."
Quistis was, for once in her life, completely lost for words.
Seifer's gaze moved to the exits, obviously tracking out a route for retreat if the going got rough. She automatically gave him a glare as her loyalties grappled for supremacy in the privacy of her own head.
You are not running out again…
What do I do? Seifer can look after himself. So can Garden, but persuading Squall to accept these losers' terms is going to be considerably more difficult than telling Seifer to get the hell back…not that I've not tried…
The leader sat back in his chair with a palpable air of smugness.
"You're trying to blackmail me?" As she said it she realised what a stupid comment it was. The bald statement hung in the air between them all.
Seifer shrugged. "There's no point, I'm going back myself, Call them up now, I don't care. You'll just save me the cost of a train ticket."
He sounded incredibly sure of himself. Only Quistis caught the subtle flicker of his eyes to her and then away again.
Oh, he knows. He knows that I'd choose Garden over him. He must know that I can't betray Garden just to keep him from paying for his crimes. It might not be nice but it's justice.
I'm sure he knows that as well.
"Ah, Mr Almasy, but it wasn't only Balamb who had a warrant out for your arrest. Galbadia too, wasn't it and I doubt that they'd be so…lenient…"
There was a silence. It went on for slightly too long before Quistis hastily gathered her thoughts sufficiently to say "They know."
A weak shot, she was painfully aware. The excuse was as transparent as clingfilm and obscured the truth just as effectively. In other words, useless.
How do they know this stuff? They've got things on me that they shouldn't have been able to find out…and we haven't even been able to get their leader's name. This stinks worse than dead fish.
And they have a lot of money behind them-what are these guys playing at?
"Nice try. But you can't bluff us." The leader turned the blank face of the ski mask to Seifer. "I hear Mr Martine was ..most upset about what you did to his Garden two years ago. Not to mention the Trabian Headmaster, what's her name?"
Shit.
Quistis considered the circumstances to be definitely a swearword situation. She just hoped Seifer didn't decide to do anything stupid. Stupider than usual, anyway…Threatening Seifer, who believed that the best defence was a good offence and often went straight for the jugular without bothering with any preliminaries, was not a good move to make if you wanted a long and healthy life.
She supposed that it depended on whether he thought you were harmless enough to be amusing.
If that's the case, you'd probably still get decked, but he'd laugh and point at you first. If he took you seriously enough you wouldn't even see him coming.
And then, well, put it this way, signing up for that Donor Card was a waste of time.
Ye gods. I'm making such a mess of this. Some diplomat.
To her surprise Seifer simply shrugged and jabbed the gun into the small woman's cheek, pulling her up onto her toes. "You and whose army?" He gave the massed ranks of the CLA the edged grin of someone with a nasty reputation to uphold.
"This one." somebody else said.
My God are we in trouble, Quistis thought.
Hyne, however, seemed disinclined to come to the rescue, so she had to manage herself in lieu of a deus ex machina.
How am I going to get us out of this one?
Even more importantly, how am I going to salvage these damn talks?
How am I going to explain all this to Squall?
Well, that's one pro. If I don't make it back, I don't have to. And they say that that proverb about every cloud having a silver lining isn't true.
"I repeat, Galbadia's only a short phone call away."
"They won't believe you" Quistis broke in flatly, wondering if it was true.
Rahel, and that soldier Isak we talked to…they'll remember. Oh yes, they will. But they might not be believed, and they're probably out on missions…
If we're lucky. And right now the only kind of luck I seem to be getting is Bad.
Hyne, Seifer, I ask you, expect you, to do one simple thing. Leave. Me. Alone.
Some people would think this was sweet. I just think it's annoying.
The leader continued with his speech. His tone of voice changed to a more coaxing timbre. "Or what about working for us? You brought down one Garden once."
Seifer smiled wolfishly. "I didn't bring it down. I was working for someone who bombed it. There's a difference. I was eighteen."
Quistis watched as this sank in round the table. She'd never really thought as herself as young, and Seifer always gave the impression of someone who had been born looking about twenty five and who would go on looking twenty five for another fifteen years.
Eighteen. Ye gods.
"When we do away with the Gardens….."The leader spoke casually, as if it was a foregone conclusion. Quistis shot him a venomous glare, which had the effect of making his hesitate, just slightly. Despite herself, she wanted to hear his proposal.
"When we do away with the Gardens there'll be places in the new order…You're good with a sword?"
Seifer gave the room a scornful glare. "Gunblade. I'm a fucking virtuoso with the gunblade. And I'm good at grievous bodily harm, too." He gave the leader a glare, which the man either ignored or missed completely.
"I'm sure an arrangement could be made."
"Not again."
"Again?"
Of course, Quistis thought. They don't know about Trabia.
Shit, I'm getting tired of every lame ass weirdo with a grudge against the world seeking me out. It's a bloody shame that the most stupid thing I did in my life is the one I'm going to be remembered for."
"What do you want? Power?"
"Don't think I'm not tempted."
Quistis could almost believe him. She hoped that her gut feeling was right. Right now her gut feeling was oscillating wildly between "I have to trust him" and "butterflies in stomach and horrible sinking sensation"
Not to mention that Seifer accepting the man's offer would mean getting rid of all evidence. Namely, witnesses. Namely, her.
"Money? The creed is greed, right?"
"Don't you think that recruiting me might kind of dent your credibility a little?" Seifer asked, surprisingly reasonably, she thought, for a man holding a gun to someone else's head.
The leader matched his tone. "I'm sure we can deal with that. People will accept anything, as long as it's shown to them gradually." He looked Seifer up and down. "Very gradually."
"Hyne, don't you listen? I told you. I'm going back to Garden. And anyone who wants to attack it." Seifer grinned suddenly, "is going to have to go through me first."
"I'm disappointed. Now that just does not make sense. You fought against Garden. Like us. We could have a lot in common."
"You've got me wrong. I don't like Garden. I don't like its headmasters. But it anyone takes them down, it's going to be me."
Quistis couldn't tell whether he was serious or not. She let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.
"I'm sorry to hear that. And so we come back to the original topic of our conversation."
"Yes, That was the blackmail, right." Quistis said, sarcastically.
"I would prefer if we were not so ..blunt about it. I expect that must be the military life coming out, hmm? Now, what was it? Oh, yes. Do what we say or, I think, your…acquaintance will be 'going down' as they say." The leader made a little gesture with his index fingers, as if he was putting the words in quotation marks. "It's an interesting point, but I do believe that the penalty for betraying the ruling government of Galbadia hasn't been repealed since, mm, the sixteenth century. If my memory serves me correctly, I think the word 'disemboweled' comes into it several times…"
Seifer's fingers tightened on the trigger of the gun. The man ignored it. His hostage gave a little choked scream as he spoke round her head. "You'll be going down first. And harder. And technically I didn't betray them. They knew what they were getting into. It's not my fault they decided they didn't like it."
"You didn't enjoy at least some of what your …previous exploits brought you?"
"It was good at the time. Pity about the last two years of sheer unadulterated hell. I don't think you're up to the same standards as Edea, though." He raked his gaze round the room, taking in the dilapidated furnishings and the motley assortment of people.
"We have power."
"Where?" Seifer gave him a scornful glance. She could guess what he was thinking. Apart from their leader, the CLA seemed nothing more than a rabble held together by a shared cause. She didn't doubt that Seifer could be bought, after all, anyone could be, given the right incentive, but she was almost certain that he wasn't going to put his neck on the line for anything less than ultimate unadulterated power.
"We will."
"My ass."
"You don't support our cause?"
Seifer shrugged, reflectively. "I'm all for the power thing. But what, your main agenda's children's rights, and being one of those kids, I have a problem with that. Besides, I support saving the whales but I'm not chaining myself to the front of a fishing boat."
"You do?"
"No. Anything that big should be able to look after itself."
Quistis thought that if Seifer had by some fluke of genetics been born as a whale, no one would need to save them and everyone would have moved fifty miles inland
The leader coughed "You'd think that being a willing, equal partner in a liberation movement would be so much more rewarding than being some woman's lapdog" He missed the glare this earned him from every female member of the CLA."
Someone laughed.
Seifer snarled. He was tense, muscles rigid and quivering with anger.
Quistis spoke quietly, between her teeth. "Don't. They're not worth it."
"That's a fucking stupid thing to say." His tone of voice indicated that they might not be, but the warm happy feeling he'd get after the grievous bodily harm would.
His eyes were narrowed, hand on the hilt of his gunblade. Quistis traced his line of sight to a stocky teenage member of the Resistance, sitting on one of the desks with one leg clutched to his chest and chewing gum, obviously the person who'd snickered. He blanched at Seifer's glare, got down and disappeared behind a couple of the larger CLA members. Quistis couldn't blame him. If looks could kill, the boy would have been nailed to the noticeboard at his back.
Seifer hissed quietly through his teeth.
Quistis relaxed, slightly. "I'd quite like to get out of here."
The leader shrugged. The rebel to his right coughed. "It's us or them, sir."
Seifer's head snapped round, dividing his attention with the ease of long practice between Quistis, the leader and the person who'd just spoken. "If you're talking about dying, it's going to be you."
"Was that a threat?"
Seifer looked vaguely pleased that someone, at least, was quick on the uptake.
"No. More of a promise. It's only a threat if you don't carry it through."
"The blackmail. What do you want me to do?" Quistis played for time. The rebel's leader was beginning to look familiar now that he'd lowered his guard and started to get more animated. And the man talked like a politician.
Interesting.
"Excuse me?" The tone of voice was apologetic, the speech somebody trying to be noticed but not wanting to intrude. It was the small woman that Seifer was holding at gunpoint. She glared at him with pure hate for a second and then turned to the leader. Seifer lowered the gun but kept it pointed in her general direction, probably, Quistis thought bitterly, as a kind of insurance.
Her voice was high and nervous. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
The leader nodded. "Oh, yes. Would you please let Nia go…?"
The woman, Nia, shook her head and then just as quickly nodded. "No, I mean, yes, of course. But I saw him coming though the hospital. There was an accident."
Seifer groaned. "I forgot about that." He lowered the gun and gave the woman an ungentle push that sent her stumbling out into the room. She came to an ungraceful sliding halt ands then stood looking round at everybody, arms wrapped round her body. A blush stained her cheeks.
"It fell thought the window. I tried to stop it, but.."
Seifer rolled his eyes and let his rucksack drop to the floor. "What she's trying to say is that when I was looking for you lot a Ruby Dragon found me. It broke into your little base corridor thing, and by now the monsters are going to be in here. With us."
"Why didn't you close it up?" the leader asked her sharply.
The small woman shook her head blindly. "I…"
Seifer interrupted with his usual finesse. "It's a big window. And the corpse will have attracted more monsters. They'll have tracked us here." He seemed more annoyed about forgetting about the monsters than being threatened.
"Why should we listen to you?" The balaclava looked accusing.
"You don't have to. Listen to her." He gestured to Nia with the hand that was holding the gun. She shrank back.
"You are kidding me." the boss said with absolute certainty. He turned to Quistis. "I'm afraid that your stalling tactic isn't going to work on me."
"My stalling tactic? I didn't even know about it! What corridors?…."
To her surprise it was Nia who answered. " We kept the corridors fff-ree. So we could stay in the base and not get caught by the monsters. And now they're in here with us!" Her voice rose half-hysterically.
The voices of the assembled rebels rose in frightened whispers. Over the conversation there was a sudden and faint scream. It went on for a long time.
Seifer grinned. "Hey, welcome to the war."
His and Quistis exchanged grim glances as the screams faded, replaced by the noise of running footsteps. They started out softly and grew louder, a muffled staccato of steps coming closer and closer.
The other rebels in the room looked round frantically. Seifer drew a bead on the opposite door, holding the pistol rock-steady in one hand. He reached down to the bag without looking and drew Hyperion with a hiss. The rebels to his right backed away, only to bump into the people retreating from the door. There was a scuffle in the centre of the room, punctuated by brief swearing as people milled together unsure of the safest place to go.
Quistis' hand reached to her own bag. She touched the leather-bound hilt of Save The Queen and pulled the whip out of its smooth curve, flicking the tip from the bag and dropping the small rucksack on the floor. In the same movement she pushed back her chair and stood up, her attention, like everyone else in the room, fixed on the door.
There was an almost imperceptible movement in her peripheral vision and she turned her head to follow it, catching Seifer out of the corner of her eye.
He jerked his head, a tiny gesture. The muzzle of the gun wavered, tilting imperceptibly to the mask-clad leader. Quistis shook her head slightly, motioning at him to wait. She took a swift step to the side, opening a clear avenue of sight between herself and the door.
Seifer nodded fractionally and returned his gaze to the door. The gun slid away, unnoticed by anyone else apart from Quistis as his finger tightened on the trigger, the knuckles white.
The footsteps were almost deafening now, clanging on metal stairs or walkways with a echoing racket that could have come from anywhere.
Seifer moved casually up to the table, to stand almost within touching distance of Quistis. She could smell him, slightly, the acrid reek of charred cloth and leather and hot metal. Quistis let the tip of Save The Queen flow out along the floor, judging the distance to the opening with her eyes.
The door handle waved up and down a couple of times and then slammed open with a bang, scoring deep gouges in the plaster wall behind it as people piled through.
Someone pushed through to the table, a shortish man with fussy, neatly parted brown hair. His expression was panicked. Quistis was almost certain that the man didn't even notice anything else apart from his leader. His hands hit the wooden table top as he shouted out "The monsters! They're everywhere."
Quistis waited until the screams had died down and asked "Did they get anyone?"
It felt almost reassuring to have something to do. For a moment she could almost understand Seifer's never-happier-than-when-fighting viewpoint. The reins of the negotiations were being snatched out of her hands. This, she felt, was something she could cope with.
The man seemed to notice her for the first time. He frowned, looking slightly disappointed that his news was not being greeted with frantic gasps by one person at least. "Not yet."
Quistis estimated the length of time it had taken from first hearing the steps to the knock at the door, and compared it with the average speed of a Grat or a Buel. "Then we've got a bit of time."
The new man looked her up and down and said aggressively "What the hell are you doing here?" He seemed to recognise her, and this puzzled Quistis until she remembered the press releases that had accompanied their victory two years ago. Maybe it was that.
Seifer snarled. "You…"
Quistis swung round. She'd forgotten about Seifer for a minute, and that was never a good thing, and not safe in company. If you forgot about him he usually did something to make you remember. Normally involving violence, which indeed seemed to be the case.
He glared at the man, hands steady on the gun. Its muzzle was levelled at the forehead of the man, who glanced round wildly as the room went very still.
Quistis put one hand to her forehead. Just when I can't think it can possibly get any worse.
Oh, with Seifer, it can ALWAYS get worse, up till he actually manages to end the world. After that, I think we're okay. There's the rub…
"What? What? My eyes…" Seifer's target looked puzzled and scared.
Quistis watched as the dot traced down to the man's chest. "Seifer. Don't you…"
For a surprise, he wasn't listening to her. "Lynch. I knew there was something funny about you. You're working for this lot. I should have guessed."
The small man went the same colour as tile grout as he looked down at the laser sight centred on his heart. He opened his mouth, obviously thought better of speaking, and then shut it again, standing very still
The door slammed open again as another tide of people fought their way into the room. Despite people being jam-packed shoulder to shoulder around the edges of the room, there was an almost visible ring around Lynch. He looked round frantically, as people gave him a wide berth. Seifer kept the laser sights of the small pistol trained upon his chest.
Quistis noticed the brand of the gun automatically. It certainly had enough firepower to kill, make a hell of a mess and possibly injure people standing on the other side of the man if the bullet ricocheted. Not good. Very not good.
Seifer snarled "You're a fucking spy."
It was beginning to dawn in the small man's eyes that not being a spy at this precise moment might be a very good idea.
"Seifer?" She made it an order as much as a question.
"When I got arrested this fuck was one of the cops asking me about you. He must've known you were all a SeeD all along. You trying to find out if I was one too?"
Lynch's voice was high and squeaky with stress, but steady. "You're not?"
"I'm worse. SeeDs have this weird thing about not shooting unarmed men."
The leader had risen from his seat with the rest. He stepped between Seifer's gun and his target, and Quistis gave him a grudging extra point. The man's got balls.
"He was acting on my orders. I told him to question you. We thought you might be a SeeD in disguise. Sometimes it's useful having members in such a diverse range of professions. You see how many people hate the SeeDs?"
Seifer flipped the safety off.
Lynch's face went even whiter, something which Quistis hadn't thought was possible. "Don't kill me." His hands waved in the semaphore of frantic Desperanto. A couple of the rebels' hands started to move stealthily to the bulge of poorly concealed weapons.
Seifer spoke levelly. "Nobody else move."
"Please. Don't kill me"
"Why not?" His tone of voice was so reasonable that Quistis felt momentarily chilled. She was pretty sure that he wouldn't actually shoot anybody, but Seifer was a wild card at the best of times, and it looked to her as if he was playing catch-up with a vengeance.
Lynch seemed to gather his composure for a second. "You are a SeeD. I was right, after all."
"No. I'm the most wanted man in the country, you fuckwits. Call yourself policemen?"
"Seifer." Quistis said quietly. This time it was an order. His head snapped distractedly towards her, but his eyes never left the man. He didn't lower the gun.
Quistis bristled.
The leader rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes and said "Please let him go. Lynch is guilty of gross incompetence at worse. Can't you rein your dog in?"
Quistis opened her mouth, thinking grimly Lynch might be guilty of incompetence now, but give Seifer five seconds and it would be murder one.
She never saw Seifer's right hand move. Keeping his eyes on the cowering figure of Lynch before him, he swung the blade of Hyperion out in a ninety-degree angle arc, holding the heavy weapon levelled straight at the throat of the leader, who, unsurprisingly, shut up.
"That dog thing…it's getting really old. You, on the other hand, won't if you come out with another crack like that. Just who the hell are you, anyway?
The leader glanced at Quistis and then must have decided he had nothing left to lose. Quistis didn't blame him. She'd seen the size of the old hospital. It was likely that there was an unbelievable amount of monsters in the building.
"Allow me to introduce myself. Asbel Shylock. Politician, entrepreneur."
The name sounded familiar to Quistis. She searched the filing cabinet of her memory, trying hard to place the name.
"Seifer Almasy. Ex-knight. Mercenary."
Quistis scowled. "Seifer, stop playing with your food." I know you're a power junkie, but this isn't helping anyone
To her relief he lowered both guns. The leader, to his credit, never moved, though Quistis could see that the yachting sweater was dark with sweat under his arms. Lynch sagged.
The leader, Asbel, gestured him back and he went, perceptibly weak in the knees. Seifer's glare followed him.
"It wasn't just Lynch. Bennett?"
There was a silence. A tall man stepped forwards. He, too, looked familiar to Quistis, She took the time to mentally reclothe him in sensible black, stuff a load of papers into his hand and add a fake moustache…
The religious fanatic.
"Bennett is a good operative for us. A lot of people believed the reappearance of the sorceresses and the Lunar Cry was a punishment from Hyne."
The whole plan was beginning to make a strange kind of sense to Quistis.
She kicked herself for not noticing as she realised with a sinking heart that she'd underestimated the CLA.
"I knew there was something going on with you and Lynch." Seifer turned to Quistis. He sounded slightly vindicated. "After they" he pointed at Lynch "…arrested me, I heard him." turning to Bennett."….talking with Lynch about the SeeD. That's why I came to get you. I thought you were in trouble."
"You don't have to protect me." Quistis pointed out the obvious. "So what were you doing? Who else is in this group? The hotel receptionist? The room cleaner?"
"Hardly. That was just a stroke of luck for us." the religious guy replied. His adam's apple bobbed nervously like the bubbles in a lava lamp.
Lynch looked from face to face. "I don't care what you're doing. I don't care about this group. I'm not staying for another minute in a room with him."
He pointed a shaking hand at Seifer, who looked vaguely flattered, pushed past the massed ranks of people and grabbed the door-knob. The small policeman seemed to have forgotten about the monsters for the moment, or at least decided that they were the lesser of two evils.
"I wouldn't go out there." Quistis warned.
Lynch opened the door. "I don't believe you, I'm…"
A dark shadow loomed up from the dark silhouette of the doorframe. It reared six feet tall, from its furry feet to its bullet-shaped head. The four sickle-shaped claws jutting from its back touched the ceiling.
The CLA member paused for a fatal second, holding the door in one hand. The claws hovered in the air for a moment and then swept down.
Everybody winced, with the exception of Seifer, who watched with interest, and Quistis, who was half-way across the room before anybody else had thought to move
She yanked the man back by the collar of his jacket, pushing into the room with an unglamorous shove, and raised Save The Queen. She sent the tip of the whip curling towards the monster. It backed away, drawing back into the dank shadows of the corridor.
Quistis spared a glance backwards to check on the policeman. She didn't hold much hope, having seen many such bears go through cadets like a meat grinder and with about as much finesse. Death Claws weren't called that for nothing.
The bear snarled. She took a cautious step back. Lynch lay on the floor. He didn't move.
Everybody froze. Nobody else made a run for the door. The intrepid and daring massed members of the Children's Liberation Front made like statues.
Seifer cursed, dropped Hyperion and lunged for the plywood door. The pale belly of the Death Claw moved closer and then disappeared as he slammed it shut, grappling with the handle.
"Chair."
Quistis hooked one of the conference chairs with one foot and shoved it across the room towards him. Seifer grabbed it, slid it under the handle and tipped it back on its legs, trapping the handle in the up position with the back of the chair. There was a thwarted scream from the other side of the door.
Quistis took charge, her voice carrying easily over the hushed shocked masses. "We better…..."
There was a thud.
A long scytheshaped blade punched through the door six inches from Seifer's right ear.
He cursed and joined Quistis in the centre of the room. "Better make a move. That's not going to hold it for long."
Lynch rolled over and sat up. To Quistis' relief he appeared fine, though he was holding his shirt out away from his body. From the looks of things the Death Claw had ripped into nothing more than cloth. He got up and joined the crowd, shivering and pale, but silent.
Another of the negotiation committee gave Quistis a shocked glance. "We can't stay in here!"
"Maybe not so much of a good idea to go out there." Quistis pointed out diplomatically.
"I'm not taking orders from you, SeeD."
Seifer bristled. Quistis rolled her eyes. "It's good advice. Take it or leave"
"Ignore her. Please." Seifer smiled dangerously. There had been more evil smiles in the history of the world, but most of them were associated with the kind of mastermind who giggled and stroked white cats. "Now you see what they pay us for."
The leader got up looked round at the assembled figures of the remaining CLA "The most important thing is to stay calm."
"That'll be difficult, since you're almost certainly going to die." Seifer said with black humor.
Quistis coughed.
"Okay, we. We're all going to die. Happy now?" He sounded tired and extremely cynical.
Quistis had never been less impressed with his talent for making inflammatory comments in uncertain situations. The remaining CLA looked terrified enough as it was.
I would be annoyed if it wasn't almost certainly true.
She turned to the leader, speaking quickly and concisely, the part of her brain that dealt automatically with strategy without even thinking taking over smoothly. "What's the fastest way out?"
"I don't know."
Quistis rethought. "Up or down?"
"The man extended a hand and rocked it back and forth in the international gesture of somebody hazarding a guess. "Down, I guess. We're two floors above the main entrance."
"Which is, uh, barred shut." Seifer said unhelpfully.
There was a burst of conversation.
"You're not thinking…"
"This is crazy!"
"She's right. It's all we can do."
"But we've got no weapons!"
Seifer picked up his bag and slung it on the table, where it landed with an audible thud and clink of small metal objects. "That's ….less of a problem. Who's already got weapons?"
There were a few worried looks. A couple of people tentatively raised their hands.
"Okay, who's got weapons and knows how to use them? You lot bombed Garden? Well, guess you can buy expertise on anything." He took a long knife from the unresisting hand of the nearest man. "You kill people with these? Well, guess you could. How long does it take to die of tetanus, anyway?"
Quistis almost smiled. She drew the leader to one side, deferring to Seifer's expertise in sharp and pointy objects. He pulled another pistol from the side pockets of his bag and drew several knives, which Quistis recognised as the Sabatiers from his kitchen.
"Okay. It looks like we're going to have to go really basic. This is a knife. You hold it by the blunt end and stick the pointy end into monsters."
Quistis smiled faintly and tuned out. She moved closer to the leader. "Do you have any weapons?"
"I don't really think we need…" His voice was stunned, cultured, with a faint Dollet accent, deepened by the stress.
"We do. Despite what you might think, he hasn't brought enough for everyone."
Quistis reached to one side, waiting as the man pulled back to allow her room, and then grabbed the tip of his black balaclava with one hand and neatly jerked it off. "You look familiar."
Sorry about the late update thing: I had all my exams in one week and couldn't manage a new chapter away For an extras bonus, I got sent this theme soundtrack to help with my work. Enjoy!
South Down The Coast-a relaxing soundtrack for a summer holiday-
Mrs Potter's Lullaby ( Counting Crows), Let Robeson Sing (Manic Street Preachers)
Jack Of Hearts (Bob Dylan), Sullivan Street (Counting Crows), (You said you'd wait till) The End of the World ( U2), Wild (Poe), Taxi Ride (Tori Amos), How Are You? (David Usher), Call And Answer (Barenaked Ladies), Follow You Down (Gin Blossoms), White Flag (Barenaked Ladies), When the World Ends (Dave Matthews Band), Who Need Sleep (Barenaked Ladies), Amazed (Poe),Ordinary Superman (Counting Crows)
Reviews: by the way, thanks everybody Lots of people liked the last chapter. This one's a bit more plotful.
Amber Tinted: It's not really a trilogy. Government Bloodhounds, South Down The Coast and the as-yet-unnamed third part to the story are all one big plot line.Think of it as the same story spread over three instalments.
Breaker-One: I know the Ruby Dragon was a bit scarier than the game, but hey, fighting something three times your size has got to suck.
Ghost 140: No, she's not going to die. Probably
Mana Angel: That was exactly what I was getting at when I put Nia in. She's not a freak or a wuss, she's just a regular person. Seifer and Quistis are not regular people, and this kind of gets a bit lost when you're always seeing things from their viewpoint.
Melete: Living in a flat doesn't bug me that much most of the time, it's just the two months a year I work like a bitch and study really hard to cram for my exams just happens to be the time everybody else starts having parties and barbecues and fun stuff.
Nynaeve77: Flawed characters are the most interesting. Seifer isn't so much flawed as completely cracked, and Quistis has her own annoying little habits.
Prodigy; Ta. I like Government Bloodhounds but I think I've come on a lot since then. I'm glad you like it too. I think its main problem was me not actually having played the game at all for the first eight or so chapters of GB…so I was writing fanfiction fanfiction if you will. But la. Not something I'd advise.
Quistis88: Not so much as sharing the fic with you as inflicting it upon…
Sheep the adventurer: Thanks for your impressed and complimentary comments. Seatbelts: wow? Dawn of the dead, huh? I didn't see that one, though I did manage to catch Shaun of the Dead. We need more rom-zom-coms, people.
Seventhe: SDTC definitely ends with a bang rather than a whimper. Two more chapters to go!
Sickness In Salvation. Ooh, I'd hate to disappoint you and cut things off just when they're getting interesti..…..
Superviolinist: You're scaring me….
Verdannii: Thanks for the review, d00d, what's with the rabbit? Meh?
Wonderful Failure. Thanks for the lovely compliments, It'd be nice if that was true. Maybe in thirty years or so I'll be able to write something both original and good, for now I enjoy the fanfiction.
Kate (anyone else got any good ideas/or shall we just stay low until the black smoke clears.)