Meanwhile, just as Aifel Massery was giving out his last orders to Worthing and preparing to take his leave, Squall was finding it extremely difficult to run and ask questions at the same time. He had darted after his three friends, through the double doors of the cafeteria, and ran almost halfway around the main hall platform before he had the chance to open his mouth.

'What did you say had happened!?' he shouted ahead of him. He quickly rounded the final bend that led him to the Garden directory just as Selphie, Zell and Irvine had reached the top of the stairs.

'We told you!' Selphie yelled over her head as she pounded the elevator call button repeatedly. 'Come on, come on, elevator! It's easier if we just show you. Hurry up, Squall! We haven't got any time left now!'

Squall opened his mouth to say that he couldn't have exactly chased her any faster without a good reason, but quickly thought better of it. He used the last few breaths left in him to take the stairs, three at a time, and dart into the elevator mere seconds before its doors managed to shut him out. His speed, quick as it was, was enough to send him flying straight into both Irvine and Zell, who had moved to the far corners of the elevator.

'Sorry, guys,' he apologised, as Zell was thrown back against the far wall, cursing loudly upon impact.

Irvine rubbed his forehead in agony. 'Oh, don't mention it, Squall,' he winced, 'it's always a pleasure for us when you drop in.'

'Yeah, Squall, it's always nice, y' know,' Zell muttered, 'Yo guys, maybe we should've used the intercom for this after all.'

'Oh, yeah, like Squall is always dead enthusiastic about getting calls from the bridge. He's really going to answer to one of those right away. Way to think outside the box, Zell.'

'Yo, it's just that -'

'Will you two knuckleheads just can it?' Selphie groaned in frustration. She was stood next to the elevator control panel, tapping the button for the third floor repeatedly. 'When is thing gonna start HURRYING UP!? Come on!'

After about the twentieth push of the button, the elevator's gears were finally called into motion, grumbling heavily about it as they worked.

There was a brief bout of silence in the small, confined box of the elevator. Zell was still clutching his sides as a result of Squall's enthusiastic entrance, and Selphie was bent over double, breathing heavily with exhaustion. Squall quickly remembered, however, that he still was no closer to knowing what he was doing in here in the first place.

'So, anyway,' he continued, as soon as he thought everyone had caught their breath, 'couldn't one of you just explain it to me now?'

'We could, you know,' Irvine replied after a minute's thought, 'but trust me, Squall, we'd make it sound a hundred times worse than it actually is. No use in giving you a heart attack before we have to.'

'Just tell me, Irvine.'

'How can I say 'no' to that voice, huh, Selphie? Sorry to break the bad news to you, Squall, but things haven't started today exactly as we'd hoped. The Galbadians have already made it to Timber.'

Silence quickly filled the elevator again.

Squall couldn't decide immediately whether he was taken aback, worried, angry, or whether he had heard his friend correctly. 'I'm sorry?'

'Yeah, I'm sorry too, Squall, but you heard me okay the first time. The Galbadians have already made it to Timber.'

Squall slowly lowered his head in dismay. He drove his fist, with as much power as he could muster, into the nearest wall of the elevator. The force that his blow delivered was enough to make the other three shudder. Luckily for him, though, the walls were fully padded.

'That's exactly what we were thinkin' as well. Listen, Squall. This one really wasn't your fault. I guess the numbers that we got from the satellite system from Dollet were pretty sketchy at best. There was nothin' any of us could've done about it. It was a mess up in the system, nothing more than that.'

Squall was only listening to Irvine with half a mind. The other half was already too busy berating himself to do anything useful. A hundred new questions were being formed in his head every second, all of them depressing ones. How could he have made such a big mistake? How could he have been so stupid? Why couldn't he have realised that the information they had acted so blindly on might have had some degree of error to it? Round and round his head they swam. How was Timber's army holding up against the attack? What sort of condition would their forces be in by the time SeeD had reached the city? Or had Galbadia already conquered Timber and moved on?

How could he have let this happen?

He had been deluding himself – that was the only explanation he could come up with. He had tricked himself into thinking that he could pass himself off as a good leader. He wasn't the hero that everybody seemed to make him out to be. What had he done, after all, in the year since he had taken over control of Garden, that made him worthy of the title of 'Commander'? Had he defend an innocent city against an overwhelming attack by the G-Army, like Cid Kramer had? Had he hell. The only thing he could think of that would be remembered, but not be memorable, was that he chose to distance himself from the inner politics of Galbadia, and allow Aifel Massery to gain the type of power that now posed such a great threat against the people of Timber and Winhill.

Had he really thought that sitting around his office, and giving a hundred orders a day to people who hung on his every word, would make him a good commander? No, he wasn't even capable of that. He had rarely made a decision that hadn't been influenced by one of his trusty advisors, usually either Xu or Quistis. He was a fraud. And he seemed to have somehow fooled everyone into praising him for his mediocre leadership skills... but not himself. Not anymore.

'Come on, come on. How long can it take a large cupboard to move up two floors?'

'Obviously longer than forty-five seconds, Sefie. The third floor is way higher above the second floor than the second floor is above the first. It's bound to take a bit of time. Besides, you should know, you've ridden in this thing thousands of time more than I have.'

'Yo, Irvine, I don't think you were s'posed to answer that. It's one of those... what'cha call it....'

'Come on, Squall,' the sensible part of his brain told him. 'Pull yourself together. There're thousands of people counting on you right now to pull through today. So you made a pretty big mistake, but there's one important thing you've forgotten – it's not the biggest mistake ever made, and it certainly won't be the last. And I'll be damned before I say you're a bad commander. You've not put a single toe out of line since you first took the job. Name one other mistake you've made, and prove me wrong. You can't, can you?

'So maybe you should've sped things up a bit. Maybe it would have been better if SeeD had reached Timber by now. Big deal. Everybody makes mistakes – probably every single commander of any army that came before you was guilty of mistakes like this. It's the only way people learn. Even you. Things could be better right now... but they could be worse. And right now, given the circumstances, things could definitely be a whole lot worse.

'Besides, it's not like you know too much about the situation at hand, anyway. All you know about it is what Irvine just told you - that 'the Galbadians have already made it to Timber'. You don't know how badly the Timber army has already been hit. You don't know how the G-Army is going about attacking the city. Hell, you don't even know that they've even attacked the city yet. Did you think about that one before you started beating yourself up over a mistake that wasn't even entirely your fault?'

'Rhetorical?'

'Yeahh – that's wha' I was talkin' about. A rhetorical question.'

'So come on! Pull yourself together! The mistakes already been made, and there's nothing you can do to change it. Stand up, be the man you are, and make the best of what you have left! And don't ever waste your time wallowing around in self-pity again. Only a truly bad commander would do that.'

Squall stepped away from the wall that he'd been slumped against. He raised his head, straightened his back and folded his arms, the intensity in his eyes suddenly rekindled.

'Irvine,' he began, turning confidently towards his friend, 'tell me everything that you know about the situation. What have the G-Army been doing? How are they going about their attack on the city? Has Garden received any word from the Timber army yet?'

Irvine brushed a wayward strand of his golden-brown hair behind his ear, perhaps a tad more dramatically than was necessary.

'Glad you've finally rejoined the living,' he replied coolly, 'To tell you the truth, Squall, we don't know much more about what's happenin' now than what I said before.'

'What you said before was summed up, graciously, into eight words,' Squall retorted irritably, 'Don't you have anything more to report than that?'

He noticed that Irvine's eyes were constantly shifting back and forth, from himself to Selphie and back again. This wasn't right at all. There was something he wasn't being told. And he didn't like that.

Irvine nervously scratched the back of his head before he continued. 'Honestly, we... err... no, mate. We don't have anything else to say. That's it.'

The eerie silence that followed this told the other three people in the elevator that Squall's temper was steadily rising.

'What do you mean, that's it?' he demanded. He had successfully managed to shout at Irvine without physically raising his voice. 'Will someone please tell me what I'm missing here? Firstly, the three of you drag me in here without as much as a word of reason. One of you then calmly tells me that innocent people might well be dying right now because of a stupid mistake that I made today. And then, to top it all off, you turn around, cool as a cucumber, and tell me that 'that's it'? 'That's it'!?'

'Listen, Squall,' Irvine cut in hastily, 'I really didn't mean for it to come out like that. We really didn't want to sound like we're all calm and c –'

'Has the Timber Army contacted Garden yet to ask me, as politely as they can, why the hell I'm not defending their city from attack? How bad is the damage that's already been sustained? Tell me something!'

The three of them quickly exchanged looks that told the other that they would give anything to get out of the conversation as quickly as possible. It was Selphie who finally had the bravery to step forward.

'Squall,' she began, adopting the same tone of voice that a tourist would use when faced with a man-eating tiger, 'I know it must have sounded a bit, well, wrong, but Irvine pretty much answered all your questions before.'

Squall was still entirely clueless. 'What do you mean?'

Selphie sighed, obviously exasperated. 'I'll explain it all from the start for you,' she continued. 'The leader of the Timber army contacted us ten minutes ago, in a panic. He told us that the whole G-Army unit had gathered at a spot roughly five hundred metres from the outskirts of the city. You know, just a few people's homes an' a shop and things like that. After we took a look for ourselves, we came down at once to find you. But, h-here's the thing, Squall. We wanted to know as soon as things got, well, bad. Really bad. So we told the Timber army to get back to us as soon as the G-Army had begun their attack. And we told Nida to send a message to us, over the intercom, as soon as all hell broke loose.'

'And?'

'That's the whole hit of the thing,' Irvine cut in, 'The Timber army haven't contacted us again. The G-Army hasn't as much as moved another foot forward. They haven't fired any bullets. They're just waitin' there, like a big blue infection on the landscape. That's what I meant before when I said 'that's it', Squall. Nothing's happened.'

Squall was, once again, torn between two options. Both seemed equally reasonable. Should he be basking in the sudden bout of good fortune that had been, for some unknown reason, sent his way? Or should he believe what he had just heard? It had sounded too good to be true.

'Selphie? Irvine?' he said, in his calmest possible voice. His temper seemed to have fallen again just as quickly as it had risen. 'I think I heard you correctly just then. Well, rather, I hope I heard you correctly. But I don't understand. None of it makes any sense. Are you telling me that this G-Army unit, the same one that Aifel Massery sent to take over Timber, has reached there before us, but... they're not attacking yet? They're not even doing anything?'

The situation had quickly become too confusing for even Squall to get his head around. He half-expected one of them to suddenly shout out 'April Fool!' at him, and blow a party whistle cheerfully in his face.

Selphie and Irvine, however, merely exchanged a defeated look and shook their heads at Squall.

'Nope,' Irvine answered, trying to make his voice sound a little cheerful, 'Nothing doing. They've been like that for over an hour now. The Timber army's communications systems were scrambled a bit earlier, so it took them about an hour to get that first message to us. That was ten minutes ago. I know what you're thinkin', Squall, because I'm thinkin' exactly the same thing here myself – sounds crazy, don't it? But it's happening. Just wait 'til you see it for yourself.'

As if on cue, the elevator's engines came to a sudden stop, flinging all four of its users to the floor as the mechanical doors opened swiftly.

'Come on, Squall!' Selphie exclaimed, as she picked herself up and dusted the filth from her lurid yellow fighting outfit, 'Do you wanna see this or not!?'

'Of course I do! Why do you think –'

'Then hurry up! Get on the elevator!'

Squall sighed heavily and hurried after her into Headmaster Cid's former office.

The one, powerful thought that was repeating itself over and over again in his mind, as he took his respective place on the elevator, was this – just what was Aifel Massery up to? What could he possibly be thinking about right now? It didn't just mildly puzzle him – it utterly infuriated him. This man was supposed to be one of the greatest military commanders that the G-Army had ever served under. That was what he had heard, at least, from every person he knew that had had the chance to meet him. He was supposed to have the absolute respect of every soldier that obeyed his orders – and he was supposed to rule them, with an iron fist, as the cruel, merciless, but undeniably successful, military leader that he was.

So, if all the speculation and rumours turned out to have some truth behind them, then just what was going on? The question had been nagging Squall occasionally, in the back of his mind, ever since he had been in that meeting earlier with the other five SeeD commanders. It was only now that he had learned of this new situation that the question turned up again in his head, like a bad neural penny. He remembered clearly what he had been thinking when he'd seen how many soldiers Aifel Massery had chosen to send to Timber... surely he couldn't have made a mistake this big? It just didn't add up in Squall's head as a wise move. He wouldn't have done the same if he were in Aifel Massery's shoes. It wasn't like Massery was totally oblivious as to SeeD's actions, as well. Squall knew that he would've always kept a rough idea in his head of how many soldiers were under Garden's command. And he could've easily, with no effort at all, with the slightest flick of his finger, sent ten thousand troops to face SeeD at Timber, and still have enough men spare to sufficiently guard his own borders. It just didn't make any sense.

These same, repetitive thoughts were beginning to worry Squall immensely. He knew perfectly why as well. It wasn't that men of his and Massery's stature shouldn't make mistakes as stupid as that – it was that they didn't. Errors like that were, all snobbery put aside, below them. They just didn't make those sorts of mistakes. It came with the importance of the position. Or, more accurately, they didn't make them without a good reason to. 'Every action a good commander makes,' Squall regurgitated, remembering the pieces of last-minute advice that Headmaster Cid had given him before his departure, 'is just another step towards his goals.' It was this sentence, replaying in his head on a permanent loop, that was worrying him the most.

'Whatever he's doing,' Squall thought again, 'he's doing it for a reason. He's doing it because it brings him closer to achieving his goals. Closer to defeating me.' But just how did actions like this bring Massery any closer to victory? Was this all part of some complicated, mastermind scheme that he had concocted?

It certainly wasn't an encouraging thought.

On the other hand, though, perhaps he had been looking into this news a bit too deeply. Maybe it didn't add up to any mystical conspiracy for victory after all. Maybe he was making mountains out of molehills. There might be a perfect logical reason for what his opponent had done. There had to be.

It was after another two seconds of deep thought that the worried expression was suddenly wiped from Squall's brow. Of course! Why hadn't he thought of it before?

The G-Army unit that was attacking Timber had travelled over a significant stretch of land in the past two days. The exact distance, he was sure, lay somewhere between thirty and forty miles. This was a long, long way to travel. It was definitely no walk in the park, even for a highly trained military unit. They would, predictably, be worn-out from the strain of their journey, not to mention all of the equipment that they would've had to transport as well. All of his worrying thoughts quickly dissolved into nothingness. The answer was so simple. It didn't take a military commander to work out that a unit of tired soldiers, with generally low morale, stood a lesser chance of winning a fierce battle than if they were refreshed, and ready to fight. It was so obvious, in fact, that Squall cursed himself mentally for jumping to his own imaginative conclusions so rashly.

'Of course that's why he's done it,' he thought again, with a relieved smile spreading across his face. 'His men are tired from the journey, and he wants them to be at their full strength before he takes on the whole of SeeD. He's doesn't want to take any chances against us. It's only logical, after all. In fact, it's probably what I would have done.'

He shuffled his feet in impatience. He wished for the millionth time that the Garden's elevators worked faster than they did.

Yes... that had to be it. That had to be the answer to his problem.

With that said and done, however, another question was still awake, and uncomfortably gnawing away at Squall's conscience. What possessed Aifel Massery to send such a small number of troops to Timber in the first place?

His thoughts, however, were interrupted once again as the elevator reached the Garden's main bridge. It came to a stop with a heavy clunk, thankfully with less force than the last elevator had. As the four friends hopped off the metal platform, before it quickly descended again, Squall saw that Nida was just putting the finishing touches to the Garden's final course.

Nida realised at once that he had company to deal with. He took his attention away from the main control panel and focused it on Squall instead, flashing one of his familiar, nervous grins.

'Hey, Squall,' he greeted cheerfully. 'How are things goin' below? Heard you weren't feelin' too good earlier. That true?'

'Well –'

'Hope it's cleared up, anyway, we got business for you to look at.'

'You're asking many questions there, Nida,' Squall smiled, as he edged towards the metal rail that separated him from a deadly fall. 'First of all, things are going as well as they can down below. All the SeeDs should be organised together within ten minutes at the most. Yes, I wasn't feeling very well earlier. Let's just say that I needed a couple of hours away from all the attention.'

'Not enough sleep then, huh?'

'Partly, yeah. It's cleared up now, though, so don't expect me to cut you any slack today. I'm afraid it's Commander Leonhart who's back in charge again. I'm going to need you to speed up the Garden's engines as soon as possible. Where are the binoculars?'

'Right here,' Nida replied, reaching into his right pocket and handing the pair to Squall. 'Take a good look now - you won't get another one. Good news, anyway. I heard about the situation from those three,' he gestured towards Zell, Selphie and Irvine with a free hand, 'so I thought, why don't I get the third set of engines warming up now? Y'know, just in case. So, anyway, my point is, that's all done for you now. We're ready to blast off at full speed as soon as you say so.'

'Good work, Nida. Do it as soon as I give the word. I need to take a look at how things are on the Galbadian side first.'

'Yes, sir. The co-ordinates you need are –2500 and 560... I think. Well, you can see for yourself.'

'Thanks.'

Squall raised the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the barren landscape eagerly for any signs of life. The continent of Galbadia had always proved to be a gloomy one. Only a small percentage of the land area had been built over by cities and villages, and most of the rest had been left charred and lifeless by the many wars of the G-Army. He hoped that the battle he was about to enter wouldn't contribute to this too much. He fiddled expertly with the binoculars' controls until he was confident that he was looking at the exact co-ordinates that Nida had given him. What he saw made his jaw drop.

Awaiting his worried eyes, just three hundred metres away from the town where his and Rinoa's fates had properly bought them together, were rows and rows of menacing blue and silver uniforms. Irvine had been right – collectively, the unit looked like a virus, infecting and polluting the surrounding landscape with every breath that they took. He hadn't forgotten how intimidating the G-Army had looked during their assault on Dollet City, and they hadn't done a lot to change that image since then. Each soldier was standing orderly in his respective line, stock still, with his weapon ready in hand and his eyes pointed forward. Judging by the occasional red uniform that showed itself among the sea of blue, this unit had six commanders, equalling that of Garden's defensive force. There were also, to his surprise, five armoured battle tanks squatting behind the back lines of the thousand-strong unit. He had fought these things before, back when he was still a student at the Garden – they were beatable, sure, but not to be underestimated. Maybe things could get trickier on the battlefield than he had anticipated.

To Squall, it was a significant and stirring sight, one that would have roused him to battle for SeeD any day of the week. To many of his soldiers, it would have been a terrifying one.

His eyes moved slowly up and down the regimented lines of G-army foes. Each was in exactly the same position as the last – the recognised fighting stance of any trained soldier. To Squall, it looked as though the unit could launch its attack on Timber at any second. And, right now, he didn't want to waste a single one of them.

It was time for the battle of Timber to begin.

Squall took the binoculars away from his eyes, and dropped them sharply to the floor.

'Nida,' he ordered, in a clear and commanding voice, 'do it. Fire up the engines, now.'

'Yes, sir. At full power, we'll be at Timber within the next eight minutes. Better hurry up, Squall. We ain't got long.'

Squall took a deep breath, and gathered his nerves. It was time. It was time to either put up, or shut up. His hands trembled slightly as the familiar feeling of anxiety reared its ugly head. Every soldier felt a little fear before they headed into the heat of battle. It was only natural, and certainly nothing to be ashamed of, or regretted. If it was the fear of death that kept a man alive on the battlefield, when all the odds pointed the other way, then so be it. True, some felt its sharp sting more than the older, more seasoned soldiers, but they were all the same in that they felt it nonetheless. It was what made them human.

Squall picked up the intercom microphone, and turned the makeshift system on to full power. The initial feedback was enough to make them all wince.

He cleared his throat.

'Everybody, this is your commander, Squall, speaking. We have an urgent situation that you all need to listen to.'

My, my. Only one more short chapter to write, and the battle will have begun. And how much am I going to enjoy writing that.

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed. It's encouraging, it really is.