Just a little one-shot, detailing an attempt by Zell to kill Squall after the fight with Fuijin and Raijin in Balamb. I don't personally support Zell/Rinoa, and this is not a love fic for the two of them (more a one-sided obsession on Zell's part than anything else) but it was written for a friend... you know who you are.

So! Without further ado, it's...

"SHOWTIME!"

Final Fantasy 8

Murderous Thoughts

They say that poison is a woman's weapon. I don't think so.

I like to think of it as a... cunning weapon. After all, Hyne knows I could never beat him with my fists alone. Entering a fight you can't win is just a way to prove to yourself and to the world that you are an idiot, as Raijin and Fujin recently proved. Besides the fact that it was all of us against just the two of them, we are actual SeeDs, and they never attained that rank. They all ran off to join Seifer as soon as they found out he was still alive and working for Sorceress Edea. I've often wondered about that... how they find out, how they managed to get close enough to him to make him notice him. I know why they became his commanders, but I can't quite figure out how they got to him in the first place. One could assume that, once they met him, he placed them high up in his ranks... but that allows for them meeting him in the first place.

Heh. Guess that's the way my mind works, sometimes... I like machines, and do you know why? They're logical. Yes, that's something me, Zell of the fists and T-Board, cares about. I'm a logical person, deep down inside. But I don't mean logical as in "Emc squared"... but more as in "this action has this consequence." In other words... when someone close to you dies, you grieve. When you hear a funny joke, you laugh. That, to me, is logic. Cause and effect. Action... and reaction.

And that is also why, at this moment, I am killing Squall, with the poison I am slipping in his ear. Rinoa has never done anything to him, and yet he has made her suffer so much... I saw her cry, last night, because of his cruelty. It took me a day to get the poison ready. It's not that hard; truth is, the poison is just antifreeze mixed with a few other machine oils, easily found by a "gear geek" like myself (as the man at the local gun-and-engine shop, Bartlo, calls me). But, when slipped into his ear as he sleeps, it will be more than enough to kill him- coursing through his ear canal until it reaches his brain and completely cooks his brain.

It helps, of course, that Squall sleeps on his side a lot, and even now, as I stand above him, uncorking the bottle silently, his ear, the gateway to his death, is facing the ceiling. He is turned towards me, which is good- if he awakes when the poison enters his ear (he shouldn't; I did a few things which heated it up to room temperature, or near it, and so he should feel just a little wetness in his ear, barely enough to disturb his sleep, much less end it) and sits up, then the poison will still be in his ear, as it would not be were he facing away; he would turn as he got up, and in turning dump most of the poison out of his ear. I do not trust that anything less than the full amount of poison in this bottle will kill him. Of course, I know (logically) that even a little of this would fry most of the vital circuits in his brain... but I have seen Squall survive worse.

So, as I stand here, getting ready to pour the poison in his ear, I think back on Rinoa, poor, desperate Rinoa, a girl of a woman who is trying desperately to not be a child, to make a difference in this world, and to do it not just to spite her father but for the point and purpose of becoming her own woman in this world. To everyone else in the Forest Owls, casual acts of government sabotage and terrorism are simply a way of getting back at the government and getting a big thrill out of it all, a way of leaning back and saying "Wow! Wasn't that explosion cool?" and, in truth, they act that way; like children given pretty fireworks and setting them off merely to watch the show. But to Rinoa, the mission of the Forest Owls is deadly, deadly clear. She wants nothing less than the total destruction of Galbadia. The other members of the Forest Owls do not really believe they can do it. If they did, they would straighten up. Zone would stop having "stomach aches" whenever trouble called (and get rid of the girlie magazines if you ask me, though there would be many who would differ), the others would wait for the fat man to actually get on the train instead of having fun by leaving him behind, and the group would basically grow up. But Rinoa... Rinoa really, really wants to do this. She is not playing around. She is deadly, deadly serious. I have seen her face when she looks at Zone as he cringes in "pain"; it smiles, yes, as it's supposed to, the smile of a pretty girl saying "look at the funny boy!"... but underneath the smile is a cold, hard, hateful edge that despises him for his weakness. Rinoa is not someone, I believe, who you want to mess around with. I believe that, in a tense situation where her beliefs are at stake, Rinoa would not hesitate to kill everyone around her. She says that she is scared that she is not as good a fighter as we are, and in many ways she is not: she is young, inexperienced, and not trained as well as we are. But in sheer fervor for battle, she is our equal. In the fight with Gerogero on the train, I saw Rinoa's eyes light up with pure, pure hatred, and her fighting was top-notch. Her flying weapon tore out Gerogero's eyes almost before the fight began, her aim perfect, and it was mostly because of her that none of us suffered from Gerogero's poisonous touch. She is a woman of great determination.

So why does Squall treat her so? I always admired Squall before, for his quiet seriousness; and now that he meets a woman as serious as he is, if somewhat more "bouncy" and energetic than he is, why does he hate her? Why does he act so cold? He blew up at her before we met the President in Timber, telling her that this is not a game and that she has no idea how serious it all really is, but I have a distinct feeling that Rinoa may be the only one of us who is truly understanding of how serious this problem is. After all, it was her town that was taken. I know that Timber was not her birthplace, but it is the place she made her home, and that matters far more than mere physical blood.

I slip the poison in. Squall's face twists down in a grimace, and I step back slowly and quietly. I do not want to see him die; I am not a cruel man. But I am a logical one.

Cause and effect. Action and reaction.

Coldness on his part, tears on her part. Tears on her part...

Death on my part.

-Fin

Reviews welcome!