The Devil's Own
-Chapter 1: Ten Million Bottles Of Beer-
'Ten million bottles of beer on the wall, ten million bottles of beer-'
"- at exactly 20:00 flat, with a team of four from Galbadia Garden and-"
'Nine million and ninety-nine hundred thousand bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine hundred million… damnit. Have to start over. Ten million bottles of beer on the wall, ten million bottles of beer-'
"- are starting at the Presidential Residence to circle the outer road and-"
'Eighty-five thousand bazillion bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-five thousand… fucking Hyne, is she still talking?'
"- must lay low and infiltrate the crowd from within-"
'… Yup.'
"- can absolutely not stir any attention whatsoever!"
'Oh, don't you worry, Quisty. You aren't.'
"Seifer, are you listening to me?"
'… Dammit, she's on to me.'
"Hey, I'm talking to you!"
Emerald eyes that had been comfortably dilated in absent-minded stupor quickly snapped back into focus at the sharp outcry of a furious female that had, thus far, been carrying on at a sweet level of monotony. This whole time, she'd never stirred too much attention from her two less-than-avid listeners (who'd both been quite comfortable with the arrangement), but apparently, that was about to change.
Alas, the respective owner of said emerald eyes shifted in his seat, mentally preparing to dodge a possible blow delivered by slender hands with a three-inch heavy binder that could, by any means, cause him a day's worth of a nasty headache.
It sure as hell wouldn't have been the first time, either.
"Seifer!"
The binder didn't make for his forehead after all, but he could feel someone, or something, nudge the side of his right leg, which he had nonchalantly propped up on the metal table in front of him.
"I'm listening," he drawled reluctantly, if only to put an end to the impatient jabs that were still being issued to the lower extremities of yours truly.
"Like all hell you are!"
Twitching lips stretched into a feral grin at the sound of that comment, and his narrow eyes lit up with poorly hidden amusement.
"Don't you grin at me like that! I've had it with you, I swear!"
Drawing his shoulders up in defeat, the male decided to devote at least some form of effort into keeping a partly straight face. Of course, with a face like his, that proved to be rather difficult; an insolent smirk seemed permanently smacked down on his otherwise quite handsome features, and he had never really tried to adopt a different facial expression. To complete that nearly flawless personification of utter insolence, his jade green eyes were always alight with a spark of natural and almost charming spunk, and said charm managed to work its way into the hearts of the people around him with outrageous ease.
Indeed, Seifer Almasy knew well how to influence his environment to his liking, even if his boyish charm generally failed on his female friend, Quistis Trepe. Said failure was probably to blame on the fact that she had known him for the greater part of her life, and she therefore also knew much better than to fall for his manipulations.
"I'm serious, Seifer," the willowy blonde female named Quistis announced impatiently. "I know everything is a joke to you, but this is important, okay?"
Sighing, he peeled his right arm from the comfortable hollow beneath the nape of his neck, and he let it snap forward in the flash of a motion, snatching the binder of doom from Quistis' unexpecting hands.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, just lemme see this. I can read too, ya know, I don't need a two hour long recital, thank you very much."
Next to him, someone gave a low chuckle. Seifer honored the man with a curt sideways glance, and his gaze found a tall, cerulean eyed brunette sporting a suede cowboy hat and a matching coat. Said man, who generally heeded to the name Irvine Kinneas, had watched the scene silently thus far, again and again amused by the countless, futile battles that his mutual friends Quistis and Seifer would wage every couple of hours or so. This time, the two blondes were bashing heads over their most favorite subject of controversy: mission briefings, or rather, the way that they were carried out.
By the way - all three of them were SeeDs, high ranking SeeD officers to even do them any justice, stationed at the beautiful Garden of Balamb, which served as a regular school as well as an advanced academy for the military arts.
For a good nine years now, the two men and their female counterpart had been assigned to the same team of cadets and, later on, battle-tested mercenaries that were commonly known as 'SeeDs'. This group of talented young people was committed to the task of turning the world into a somewhat safer place – in return for adequate payment, of course. The lines of their enemies were commonly filled by simple monsters, political terrorists, renegade Guardian Forces and the occasional sorceress, but those were few and far in between.
It was a pretty decent job, really, and generally not very complicated. They were young (none of them had breached the twenty-year mark yet), but they were carefully trained and made a fair amount of cash carrying out missions for various sponsors. They frequently traveled all over the world, since the Garden committee owned facilities on each of the three continents that were part of the Galbadian empire. On top of that, SeeDs were quite popular with the ladies, which was always a plus in Irvine Kinneas' books.
Oh yes, life could have been so blissfully sweet for each of them.
But of course, Seifer and Quistis always managed to find something to get pissed off about. Today, it happened to be an assignment that had been delivered from their very headquarters in Galbadia. They had been tasked with guard duty at a parade that was to be held at the honors of newly elected Galbadian president Vinzer Deling. Seifer in particular wasn't precisely very fond of their latest head-of-the-state, for reasons that he usually kept to himself. Hence, his naturally short attention span had been extremely lacking as soon as the name "Vinzer Deling" had left Quistis' lips sometime in the beginning of their briefing.
Which, by the way, had been no less than two hours ago.
From then on, both Irvine and Seifer had spent the time loitering on a couch in Quistis' office, drifting somewhere between apathy and unconsciousness while the blonde girl had been pacing before them restlessly, raising her voice and jabbing her finger at random lines on her assignment notes. Irvine himself had at least bothered to grunt an infrequent "hn", or perhaps even a muffled "uhu" in order to feign some sort of mental involvement, whereas Seifer had given up entirely on listening to their female friend rant on and on about the most basic and self-evident aspects that a mission of such nature obviously entailed.
"Parade in Deling City on May 1st, protect the Vinzer and his family, yadda yadda yadda…" Seifer now summed their task up eloquently, while rolling his eyes at the papers in his hands. "Hey, why ever did they change the name of Galbadia City, anyway? Like that incompetent nutjob of a president really deserves to have some fuckin' town named after his ass. Gimme a fuckin' break."
Quistis' perfectly plugged golden eyebrows had slanted wryly at Seifer's idea of a mission briefing, and she was crossing her arms in front of her chest grudgingly as she watched her companion lolling in the corner of her couch and strewing dirt from his boots all over her once surgically clean office table.
"Anyway, back on track," the baritone of Seifer's voice declared, while the nineteen year old flipped through Quistis' notes carelessly. "'Heed the high-rated risk of resistance faction activities'… no shit, what's new? What sorta complete incompetent moron wrote this, anyway?"
"I told you it came right from headquarters," Quistis hissed irritably, while starting a vain attempt at snatching the binder out of Seifer's iron-clad grasp.
"Figures. I swear, they always manage to whip up the greatest bullshit over there, like we're fuckin' kids without a clue. They wouldn't know their ass from a hole in the ground over there, yet they think they're somehow qualified to give us mission briefings!"
Groaning, he continued to flip through the pages, before he suddenly flailed the binder through the air, showing off a picture of a dark haired young man with cold brown eyes who was smirking at the camera.
"Ah, here we go. Aren Deling, or "the dud", aka our new director over at headquarters. Could he be any more of a brainless shit? Is it biologically possible?" Seifer asked dramatically in his best quiz master impression. "No, folks, even nature has its limits, but hey, let's give him a hand anyway!"
After he had let out another impatient sigh, he carelessly tossed Quistis the heavy folder, almost knocking the slender girl off her feet as she caught it square before her stomach. Scowling darkly, she straightened out her orange wool ensemble and pierced the ignorant, bulky blond with a look that could have been aimed to kill, hadn't it been for the fact that she didn't make use of her deadly blue mage's 'Laser Eye' technique.
"Right. When are we leaving?" Irvine inquired curiously from his corner of the couch.
After she had regained some of her composure, Quistis cast a brief glance at the train tickets that had been included in the assignment package.
"Tomorrow. We'll be traveling by train, leaving at 12:00 sharp. We'll spend the night at a hotel in Timber and transit to Deling City in the morning. This is on quite short notice, so you'd better get your gear ready now."
"Yeah, perish the thought of giving us a week's notice or something! Dumb, good for nothing fucks."
With a rasp growl that was almost common to his voice, Seifer drew his legs off Quistis' table and leaped onto his feet in one swift movement. He had a habit of cloaking his tall, muscular built in a long, loose, off-white trench coat adorned by a number of crimson colored crosses, even if beneath said attire he usually wore form-hugging shirts and combat pants.
From the depths of one of his pant pockets, he now produced a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, but before he could have even dreamed of treating himself to a smoke after Quistis' exhausting lecture, the resolute girl had already fixed him with a glint that suggested murder.
This time, Seifer could have sworn that he had spotted the telltale Laser Eye spark smoldering threateningly in those cobalt blue orbs.
"Don't you dare smoke in here! How often do I have to tell you?"
Not even bothering to give a proper reply, Seifer twisted his gaze to the ceiling. Then, he made a less inconspicuous retching sound that seemed to mean something along the lines of "spare me", before he resumed to fashionably ignore the girl and marched out of her office only to light his cigarette the moment that he had set foot outside her doors.
Needless to say, Seifer Almasy was a cocky and spoiled young man. To his defense, it had to be said that he was also a brilliant and talented fighter; he was versed in the use of his weapon of choice, a gunblade model from the ever popular Hyperion series, as well as basic combat spell work and Guardian Force control. His best friends knew of his qualities and usually accepted his flaws, or at least they tolerated them, but even if they wouldn't have, Seifer probably wouldn't have given half a damn. He was who he was and he did what he liked, and he certainly never grew tired of informing his environment of his vast disinterest in their redundant opinions.
Indeed, quite frankly, he couldn't possibly have cared any less what anyone thought of him.
"Damn dude, you really pissed her off this time."
Inhaling deeply and blowing the grey fumes from his cigarette back out through his nose rather than his mouth, Seifer gave a supple shrug at the comment of his long haired brunette companion, who had just emerged from Quistis office as well.
"She'll get over it," he snorted lazily.
"Yeah, I guess," Irvine agreed as he leaned his back against a wall to study his friend from beneath the brim of his cowboy hat.
Seifer was still standing in the middle of the hallway, blowing shrouds of smoke into the air, not bothering all too much about the fact that Quistis would probably have a seizure the moment she'd follow Seifer's example and set foot outside her door.
"I don't really get why you were so annoyed though, Quisty's recital left aside," Irvine finally continued.
Again, Seifer heaved his shoulders in a display of indifference and abandon, but the apathy in his gaze had kindled with resentment.
"The prospect of guarding Vinzer Deling and his runt during one of those stupid ass parades makes me wanna throw up my lunch, which, really, I haven't even had yet," Seifer explained with a bored inflection. "Speaking of which, I'm fuckin' starving."
"Yeah, I see your point. Still, it'd be a good chance for another career boosting news appearance, ya know," Irvine replied with a wink and a suggestive grin.
Seifer rewarded him with a guttural grunt, before he flicked his cigarette butt onto the floor and crushed the glinting ash beneath the heavy heel of his boots.
"Like I wanna be any more important or famous than I already am," he hissed in annoyance. "This job is starting to suck serious ass, especially with headquarters always on our case."
"Heh. Caraway and Deling weren't too pleased, were they."
"Nope. Not really. And now the dumb fuck's President, I mean, what gives?"
"Don't know," the cowboy mused, while staring at the flattened cigarette on the marble floor. "Maybe we'll get better pay now or something?"
Seifer snorted. "Hardly. More work for less dough, more like it."
"I thought your old man was gonna pull some strings?"
"He's busy playing golf with the other geezers. Why do you think they handed over Trabia and Balamb?"
"Good point."
"Ain't it just?" Seifer laughed sarcastically.
"Guess we can only wait and see."
"Yep. Be still my beating heart."
Grasping the left side of his chest in mock fascination over the subject of their new leaders, Seifer threw his tanned, angular face into a snide scowl that reached his eyes and resonated in their viridian depths in a faint, cynical glow.
A second later, he dropped his hands almost abruptly, and his features snapped back into a mask of snobbish indifference.
"Anyway. I need some chow."
"Sure, Private, you got my approval. Watch that diet, though, you've been getting a bit on the chubby side," Irvine sneered, but he quickly scurried out of reach and down the hallway before Seifer could have had a go at him for the tease.
The blond merely let out a rasp chuckle.
"Retard."
Sighing, Seifer followed the brunette's trail to the cafeteria, and he caught himself praying quietly that he would maybe break his neck on the way, or better even that Vinzer Deling might break his, or that, for any other damned reason, he would find a way to be exempted from his parade duty.
He had never seriously assumed that, somehow, his prayers just might be heard…