Chapter 10 - The Plan
"So what did the good doc say, Quisty?" Zell asked, pouring mustard over the three hotdogs in front of him.
Quistis settled into her regular seat in the cafeteria, exhausted. "She says that I'm about one month along, and that I'm healthy as can be. Good thing Rinoa drank the wine I ordered at the party."
Rinoa smirked. "Ha! Good thing for YOU maybe."
Quistis chuckled.
"So, uh... what's going on with you and Squall, Rin?" Zell inquired, keeping his eyes on his plate.
"What do you mean?" she asked, look at him quizzically.
"Well, uh... I saw you leaving Squall's room late last night."
Rinoa rolled her eyes. "He was having a bad night and I just wanted to make sure he was okay. Nothing happened. Not like this is any of your business."
Zell chuckled and bit a large chunk out of his hotdog, shrugging.
"Speaking of which, I need to go to the library," Rinoa said, rising from her seat.
"Who was speaking of the library?" Zell asked through a mouthful of food with a cocked eyebrow.
Rinoa ignored him and walked toward the exit.
Quistis sighed and propped her head up by an arm on the table, not seeing the expression of surprise on Zell's face as he looked toward the entrance. She'd been trying hard to keep from stressing out, but with Seifer gone, and the buzz flying around about some new weapon of mass destruction being saught after by a group of unknown people, it was becoming rather difficult. She needed better comforting than her friends could give her. She was grateful for their efforts, but they couldn't offer her the comfort and security that she got from Seifer.
"God damnit, Seifer," she groaned to herself. "Get your ass home already, will ya?"
She heard someone laugh softly behind her, but she didn't register the voice until it spoke.
"You summoned me, my lady?"
Not believing it, she looked at Zell, who was grinning at someone behind her. Slowly, she turned around in her seat.
His handsome face smiled down at her from a few feet away, causing her to bolt from her chair and rush to him.
"Woah, easy there," Seifer chuckled as Quistis collided with him. He wrapped his arms around her. "Don't want you to hurt yourself."
She couldn't hold her emotions in check any longer, and she burst into tears against his shoulder. "You're never leaving again, you hear me?" she choked out.
Seifer smiled, his arms still tightly around her. "Never?"
"Never ever," she replied.
"Come on, babe," he said, breaking away. "Let's go discuss this prison sentence in our room, shall we?"
She smiled, wiping at her tears. "Good idea."
Zell chuckled as he watched his two friends walk away and shook his head, returning his attention to his plate.
"Commander?" a smooth voice said from behind Squall's office door.
Squall looked up from his notes that lay scattered across his desk. "Eve?"
"Yes," she replied. "May I come in?"
"Yeah, it's open," he said, leaning back in his chair.
Eve pushed the door open slowly, then stepped inside.
"Have a seat," Squall offered, gesturing to one of the chairs in front of his desk.
Eve smiled graciously, and sat down. "Thank you, sir."
"Please... it's Squall," he corrected her.
"Squall," she said, in a low and downright delicious voice.
Squall shivered involuntarily at the sound of his name escaping her lips. The simple sound conjured all sorts of inappropriate images in his mind, and he shook himself, trying quickly to dismiss such thoughts.
He cleared his throat. "So, um... what can I do for you?"
Eve smirked slightly, fully aware of his sudden discomfort. "Well, I had two things I wanted to discuss with you. If you don't mind..."
Squall found himself blatanly staring at her mouth as she spoke, but he seemed to stop caring. He hadn't really noticed it before, but her lips were perfectly symmetrical on each side and the lower lip was slightly fuller than the top one, giving her a slight pout. It was rather sexy.
"Uh, o-ok... please... speak," he stuttered, tearing his eyes from her shapely mouth.
"Well, I did some research," she began, "and I have a theory. We can safely assume that this weapon, whatever it may be, was here before. So, I did some checking around in the Garden's history, and though I didn't come up with much helpful information, I did come up with this."
She handed over a photocopy of a page, taken from a what looked like an architectural book on Balamb Garden.
"Now," she continued, "if you look in the third paragraph there, you'll notice there's a brief note about some architectural changes that occured here within the last twelve years. This includes some changes ordered by Garden Master Norg to his underground lair. Now it doesn't actually specify that it was the lair that changed in the book, but if you were to read the rest of the book, you'd learn that no other changes were made to this Garden that were ordered by Norg. Headmaster Cid made all of the desicions about the above-ground levels...."
"So we can therefore assume that something was done below ground," Squall finished.
"Right!" Eve exclaimed. "So, if you look at the original blueprints and diagrams of the Garden, including the blueprints that were in Grease Monkey's possession, you'll see that the underground lair is a tad different than the underground lair actually is. The entire section that you and Rinoa were in earlier... well, that's not an original part of the Garden."
Squall looked thoughtfully at her for several moments before speaking. "Ok, so that portion, including the secret room, was built within the last twelve years. Meaning that Norg must have known about this weapon and was hiding it in the Garden."
"Yes," Eve said. "But we still don't know if Norg was hiding it to keep it out of the wrong hands, or if he was keeping it for himself, or someone else, to use for villainous purposes."
Squall nodded. "And we won't know that until find out who's responsible for taking the weapon... which raises another question. When and how was the weapon removed from Garden... and without anyone noticing?"
Eve took a breath. "Well, I did some research on that, too. And everything points to the most plausible time being when you guys crashed into Fisherman's Horizon two years ago."
"Grease Monkey," Squall said bitterly at the realization. "We've already assumed that he knew about it, and he, or possibly Norg, must have taken the opportunity to move it out without anyone noticing. There were workers all over the damn place. It could have slipped by easily."
Squall got up from his chair, disgustedly, and turned to his window. "Mother fucker!" he hissed.
Eve sat quietly, hesitant to speak again for fear of getting her head snapped off by the seething commander.
Squall took a deep breath and turned toward her. "Sorry," he muttered to her, noticing her discomfort. He sat back down calmly.
"You said there were two things you wanted to talk to me about," he stated after a while.
"Well, the other can wait. It's not really appropriate right-"
"Eve, please... I apologize for getting angry," he sighed remorsefully. "Please... go ahead. I'm fine now, really."
"Well, I... uh... wanted to... know..." she stammered, uneasily.
Squall raised his eyebrows. He'd never seen her lose composure like this. She had always been calm and level-headed. Now she seemed like an awkward teenager trying to ask someone to prom.
"I wanted to know... if you'd like to..." she began again. Frustrated at her behavior, she finally sputtered, "I wanted to know if you'd like to join me for a drink sometime... maybe."
Squall chuckled. I wasn't far off.
"Sure," he replied, finally. "When?"
She froze. She hadn't thought about this part of it. "Uh... tomorrow night?"
"If the world hasn't ended by then, I will join you for a drink tomorrow night," he answered, amused by her behavior.
She smiled weakly and rose from her chair. "Ok, I'll see you at the meeting tonight."
"Ok."
She raced to the door and slammed it shut behind her.
Squall chuckled again. It's just a drink. What can it hurt?
"So, we've come to the conclusion that either Norg or Grease Monkey, and maybe both, had this thing removed from Garden at that time," Squall concluded, glancing around to the people in front of him.
"Makes sense," Cid sighed. "There were tons of people running in and out, carrying large objects at all times. There was no way we would have recognized anything suspicious, especially since we weren't looking for it."
"So, where do we go now?" Eve asked, leaning forward in her chair.
"Well, since the only people who know about this thing are either dead silent with their information, or just plain dead..." Seifer began, reclining in the chair in front of Cid's desk, "I guess our only options are to search for this thing ourselves by narrowing down the places we know it won't be... and by trying to find these mystery men along the way. They may know something we don't. Not to mention the fact that we still need to find out who they are, who they work for, and why they want this thing."
"We also need to start doing some research on what exactly this weapon is, and what it can do," Cid chimed in.
"I'll assemble a research team," Squall told him.
"And the rest of us will start looking for these men," Seifer said.
"How do you know there aren't women?" Eve challenged.
Seifer rolled his eyes. "Men AND/OR women. Sor-ry."
"Whatever," Squall sighed. "Come on, we've got a lot of work to do for at least the next week or two."
"Aye, aye, Cap'n," Seifer drawled.
"That's Commander," Squall mumbled, walking out the door.
A/N: I hope you guys aren't getting bored yet... 'cause the interesting part has only just begun. And don't cry, Squinoa fans, for this is still a Squinoa!! Just be patient, all will be well in the land of FF8.
To DBH- Damn, you're quick! Well, I hope this chapter summed it up a bit for ya. It's getting a bit complicated, I know... but it's fun that way, and you seem to agree. :-) Things will be resolved in time. Thanks again for your involvement in this story. Your reviews make me happy and motivated.
To Rinoa Leonheartilly- Thanks for the review! Yeah, things are getting messy, but our heroes wouldn't have jobs if things didn't get a little messy from time to time. Glad you're enjoying it!
To yummychocolatexD- Just you wait... Rinoa's gonna get even cooler later. Hee hee. Thanks for the comment!!
Fantasy-dreamz- Thanks a bunch! I update pretty frequently... at least one chapter a day... keep watching for new ones!