Quistis felt the room swimming around her. She would have had enough trouble getting Squall to open up on an overnight trip, but bringing Seifer and Zell... She may as well have packed nitro and glycerin and shaken vigorously. This trip had just metamorphosed into a recipe for disaster.
"You... you want me to take Seifer and Zell?" she asked.
"That's right," replied Alekhine. "Is that a problem?"
Quistis could see the joke glittering in the Instructor's eyes. He knew what would happen to the mission with the lethal combination of Seifer, Squall, and Zell.
"No. No problem," she said, setting her jaw. Her personal agenda might have failed, but damned if she'd let one Instructor and three unruly junior cadets get in the way of her career.
"Good. Write up an amended profile, and go inform your troops. You leave tomorrow at dawn."
Quistis descended the steps into the Quad, looking around the airy facility for Seifer, Squall, and Zell. As she crossed, she heard a commotion erupting to one side. She hurried over, knowing that where trouble arose, she could count on finding Seifer.
Sure enough, after hurrying to the other side of the Quad, she found Seifer, holding Zell in a tight headlock, while Fujin restrained the fighter's arms. Raijin stood off to the side, laughing. Even having ganged up on Zell, they must have surprised him, to have incapacitated him so completely.
"Seifer!" she snapped, voice resounding authoritatively.
"Uh-oh," Seifer said, laughing at Quistis. "I'm in trouble now."
"Let him go, Seifer."
Seifer complied, releasing Zell, who dropped to his knees, massaging his neck.
"You gonna turn me in, Quisty?" asked Seifer, holding out his wrists. "Slap the cuffs on me? See that I get some demerits?"
"Why were you beating up Zell?"
"We weren't beating him up," Seifer shot back, crossing his arms over his chest. "This is official business of the Junior Disciplinary Committee."
"Official business, my ass," Quistis said, extending a hand to Zell.
Seifer snapped a finger and Fujin produced, as if from thin air, a folder. Seifer took it from her and removed a slip of paper: the day's schedule for the JDC. On it, she could see routine actions, like, "Patrol junior cadet's commons," or, "Scout the secret area." Most of the entries had Seifer's ornate script or Fujin's precise, engineer's printing about them. Halfway down on the page, though, Quistis noted a late addition, in Raijin's clumsy scrawl, "Give Zell Dincht a wedgie. He is a wiener."
Raijin had not, she noted, spelled. "wiener" correctly.
"See?" Seifer said. "It's on the schedule. If it's on the schedule, we have to do it. You of all people should understand that. Y'know, duty and all."
Quistis could do nothing but sigh in frustration as she passed the paper back to him. Her day had not shaped up according to plan, and things, she knew, would only get worse before they got better.
"So, anyway, Trepe, was there something you wanted?" Seifer asked.
"Actually, yes. Pack your gear. We're going on a mission. We leave tomorrow morning." Quistis pressed a Connecter into Seifer's hand.
"The hell? What if I don't wanna go?"
"Too bad," Quistis said. "Instructor Alekhine insisted you go along."
Zell laughed hysterically. "Hear that, Seifer! You're stuck! You're going on a mission!"
"Not so fast, Zell," Quistis replied. "You're going too." She handed him a Connecter as well.
"What?" Zell exclaimed. "Oh, man! Tomorrow is hot dog day!"
"Tough shit, runt. Looks like you're stuck too," Seifer said.
"Just get your stuff ready and meet me at the front gate at sunrise." Inwardly seething, she walked away from the two, hoping tomorrow would never come.
The hardest part of her quest lay ahead of her: convincing Squall to come along.
Quistis returned to the dormitories, showered and put on a fresh uniform, and put up her hair. She added a daub or two of perfume – just a touch, not overpowering, and set out on the hunt.
She stood in the mouth of the proverbial lion's den: outside the door of Squall's room. She recited to herself, willing the fear to leave her body. I fear nothing. I am the master of my fear. I control my fear, I use my fear as a weapon. My fear moves over and through me. I fear, but I fear no thing.
When she'd reached an appropriate level of calm, and before she had a chance to second-guess herself, she knocked frantically on the door. In a few moments, Squall opened the door, clad only in his blue uniform pants and a white t-shirt.
He stood, framed in the doorway, watching her, totally silent, no expression on his face. He didn't even raise an eyebrow.
"Umm... hi?" she said.
No reaction. Squall had more in common with most statues than with the average twelve year-old boy. Quistis watched him, watching her, and ached. Squall's beauty made her heart hurt.
Quistis asked, "What are you doing?"
Squall blinked, a slow, almost reptilian process. His eyelids lowered and remained shut for an almost interminable moment before opening again. Other than that, he gave no indication that he had heard Quistis speak.
"I have some rather exciting news," she said. "Maybe you'd like to invite me in so we could talk about it?"
So saying, Quistis moved to one side, attempting to slip between Squall and the doorframe. His arm lanced out immediately, blocking her path.
"No," he said, voice mechanical. Finally, though, she could see some emotion in his eyes. Her attempted trespass, her effort to encroach on his domain threatened him, made him – what, afraid? Enraged?
"Well, anyway," she said. "I thought you'd like to know that I'm running a mission tomorrow into the nearby forests. It's a twenty-four hour monster crawl, and I'd like to bring you along. I have the profile here, and it's already been approved by the Powers That Be. We're meeting at sunrise at the front gate," so saying, she handed Squall her final Connecter.
He looked at the Connecter for a long moment, studying the panel without reading the words written on it. Finally, he looked back up at Quistis.
"Find someone else." He tossed the Connecter back to her and retreated into his room, closing the door in her face. She heard the click of the lock, and it sounded like something snapped. In her head, something did.
"Open this door, Squall Leonhart!" she bellowed, pounding on his door. "Open it right now or I'll break it down!" She continued pounding until she heard the lock clicking again, when she took a step back and put her hands on her hips.
"Now you listen here, Squall," she fumed, stomping her left foot on the floor. "You are going on this mission whether you like it or not. I don't care if you sulk the whole time, or if you don't say a word to me, but I've spent a lot of time and energy setting this mission up, and I'm not going to flush it down the toilet just because you're feeling antisocial. I outrank you, so if I say you're going on this mission, you are going on this mission, and that's that. End of sentence, exclamation mark. Understood?"
Squall watched her from behind veiled eyes and, when she had finished, wordlessly held out his hand. She handed him the Connecter. Without further comment, he turned his back on her and slammed the door in her face.
Quistis felt her bangs dancing in the breeze left by the slamming door.
"That could have gone better."
Dawn caressed Balamb Garden like a lover, and the four young warriors assembled at the building's front gate. Each carried a weapon, a backpack, plus one large sack containing the tent.
"Seifer, Zell, take the tent and we'll move out," Quistis ordered.
They'd barely cleared Garden when trouble reared its ugly head.
"Quistis," Zell whined, "tell Seifer to slow down! He's dragging me along!"
"Well, if you didn't have those stubby little legs, twerp, maybe we could move at a decent pace."
Quistis turned to look. Seifer carried the front half of the sack storing the tent, Zell carried the rear. Seifer's longer strides meant Zell had to move at double time to keep pace. Quistis, who by now had worked up a steady head of righteous indignation at her situation somehow had little sympathy for the smaller boy's plight.
"Deal with it," she muttered through clenched teeth.
"Ooh," Seifer said, laughing, "You're in a lovely mood today. Perhaps it's that time of the month?"
"Shut up, Seifer," she rolled her eyes.
"I hope, for our sake, it isn't," he continued. "The blood will have every monster in a two-mile radius after us."
"Shut up, Seifer," she repeated.
"I, myself, am not worried," he kept talking, ignoring her ire, "and we know you can handle yourself. No monster will want to eat Leonhart – he's stringy, too much gristle. But Zell: he looks like a particularly tasty morsel."
"Hey!" Zell objected.
"Yup. He's all nice and plump, and comes in a convenient snack size. I bet the monsters will be falling all over themselves to gobble him up."
"Quistis, make him stop!"
Squall marched on in silence. Quistis had to check behind her to make sure he hadn't deserted them. She wouldn't have blamed him for doing so.
"Why, the very sight of this delectable treat should set those fiends salivating. In fact, I would be surprised if we didn't have a T-Rexaur or two coming for dinner. Of course, for something that large, Zell would only be an appetizer, not a main course."
"Knock it off, Seifer! Quistis, you don't really think that they will be T-Rexaurs, do you?"
Seifer kept talking, "Oh, sure, Zell. Between Quistis' bleeding all over the place, and your crunchy-on-the outside, chewy-on-the-inside candy goodness, they'll be lining up to get at us."
"Quistis, what are we going to do if there are T-Rexaurs? Can we handle them? I don't want to fight T-Rexaurs! If it were in the training center, it'd be one thing, but here, we're away from the infirmary and..."
"Listen, the little girl is gonna wet herself."
"Enough!" she screamed, pivoting sharply on her heel to face the group. "I! Have! Had! It! This is to be a silent march until we reach the campsite! Pretend we're on a stealth mission. Pretend we're surrounded by hostiles. Pretend your jaw is wired shut. Pretend... oh, hell, pretend you're Squall! Just shut the hell up, both of you! I will say this one time, and one time only: until we reach the campsite, I don't want to hear another peep out of any of you."
Quistis whirled around, her blonde hair moving in a cloud. She stormed off ahead of the group. Zell gaped. Squall shrugged. Seifer smirked.
The entourage hadn't proceeded ten yards when Seifer insisted on escalating the situation from bad to worse.
"Peep."
By nightfall, the group arrived at Quistis' chosen campsite with no bloodshed amongst the squad members and no monsters encountered. Quistis spent the time marching trying to reclaim control of her emotions. Quistis had earned herself a reputation not just as a prodigy, but also as someone with the propensity to act rather bossy – domineering, even – towards others. The mission, as it had shaped up so far, would not help dispel that myth. Unless she took action.
"Okay," she said, trying her best to sound cheerful. "We'll make camp here. Sound good?" She'd chosen a campsite conveniently near a small stream that gurgled pleasantly as they surveyed the area.
The three nodded at her, though whether they accepted her choice of campsites or merely feared her wrath, she could not tell. Finally, Zell stepped forward.
"I'll set up the tent!" he said, trying to drag the hefty bag from off Seifer shoulder.
"Great. Thanks, Zell," she replied, flashing him a smile. "Who wants to check the perimeter?"
Seifer's hand shot up like a bolt.
"Seifer it is. I don't think there will be anything worth worrying about right now, but we may get lucky. The real action should pick up overnight."
Seifer stalked off into the trees, disappearing amongst the cover like a gray ghost.
"Squall, why don't you help me collect some firewood. There should be plenty of usable material around here. That sound okay?"
Squall shrugged. "Whatever."
Seifer returned from his patrol just as Squall got the first flickers of life out of the fire.
"Okay," Quistis said, "we're doing well. How're you doing with that tent, Zell?"
"Fine..." he muttered, staring at a few pieces. "Everything's... what the hell...? Everything's fine."
"Shit," Seifer said throwing up his hands in the air. "The runt doesn't know how to put a tent together."
"I do too!" Zell said, leaping to his feet and turning on Seifer. "I'll have you know I'm practically an expert in assembling tents. I'm like a doctor in tentology!"
"Sure you are. So why isn't that bar fitting in place for you?"
Zell went back to the tent, to where a crossbeam had sprung loose. "This piece? It just needs to be... bent... a little. Just... like... this..."
Snap.
Quistis felt her heart sink as she saw the metal rod in Zell's hands snap in two. She knew, in that instant and beyond all doubt, that her mission would not have a happy ending.
"Oh, that's just great!" Seifer said, crossing his arms over his chest. "That's brilliant! I didn't want to come on this mission in the first place, and now I have to sleep outdoors because you broke our tent? Screw this!"
Seifer moved in a flash, lunging at Zell's backpack. Before anyone could react, Seifer had obtained the martial artist's sleeping bag and started striding towards the river.
"Hey! What the hell you doin'?" Zell cried, trying to catch up with Seifer, to no avail.
Seifer turned, smirked at Zell, and with definite malice, flung the sleeping bag into the river. Grinning, Seifer started walking back to the campsite, passing Zell on the way.
"Sleep tight, jackass."
Zell heaved his sleeping bag out of the water and threw it on the shore, panting – not from the exertion, but from rage.
Zell's temper, Quistis had learned, had two layers. Superficially, he had a short fuse, and seemed prone to explosive outbursts. Such reactions, though, only involved verbal attacks. A deeper level existed, one that required much more provocation in order to reach. Though not as accessible, these fits of temper had more in common with volcanic eruptions: built up through a long, slow process of constant pressure until culminating in a sudden, devastating and often violent release.
Seifer had tapped into the latter of these two.
"You... you sonuvabitch!" Zell screamed. "I'm gonna kill you!"
"Shut up, crybaby," Seifer said. "Just go take a nap in your soggy sleeping bag and we'll wake you when it's time to go home. Us grownups have got a job to do."
Zell rushed Seifer, bellowing incomprehensibly. Normally, Zell would have defeated Seifer in an unarmed match, but in his rage, Zell had lost focus. Rather than any kind of specific attack, he sought merely to throttle Seifer, who easily fended off the shorter man, grabbing away his hands and laughing.
"This is the best you can do?" Seifer chortled. "Some great fighter you turned out to be."
Seifer had so preoccupied himself with mocking Zell that he failed to notice Quistis approaching him. She grabbed Seifer by the ear and pulled as hard as possible.
"Holy shit!" he screamed, caught unaware by the pain. Quistis grappled him, swinging him around in front of her and pressing her knee into his crotch.
"Don't talk, just nod: you want me to knee you?" she asked.
Seifer shook his head no, frantically.
"Say 'please.'"
Seifer set his jaw, his eyes burned. Quistis forced her knee a little higher.
"Please..." The word came out sounding strangled.
"'Please' what?"
"Please don't knee me."
"Good," she said. "Now, I want you to apologize to Zell for the sleeping bag. I don't have to tell you what the punishment for refusal is."
Seifer breathed heavily, nostrils flaring in anger. She knew his mind, knew that he'd actually consider suffering the pain if it meant not apologizing. Finally, though, self-preservation won out.
"I'm sorry for throwing your sleeping bag in the river, Zell."
Zell laughed at Seifer's predicament. "Serves you right, you big bully."
Quistis released Seifer. "Shut up, Zell, or you're next."
Zell's eyes grew wide as plates. "But what'd I do?"
Quistis surveyed the campsite, the wreckage of her mission. She looked at it for a long moment, and thought prior to speaking, and when she did, she spoke with frightening calm to her voice.
"Here's what's going to happen: Seifer, go over to that tree. Squall, to that rock. Zell, next to the river. These are your assigned positions. You are not to move from them for any reason whatsoever. If we are clear on that point, you may proceed to your positions for the evening."
Squall and Seifer went for their backpacks, grabbing their sleeping bags.
"I said nothing about sleeping bags. There will be no sleeping bags for any of you. Seifer, what impacts the members of your squadron impacts you. If they go without, you go without. Squall, if you feel this decision is unfair, I suggest you find a time to thank Seifer for his actions. Now, I will repeat again: you may proceed to your positions for the evening. I am going to go into the forest and carry out this mission by slaying whatever monsters I find there. I will return for you at dawn, and if any of you have moved, you can be sure that you will regret it."
"...and so I went into the forest and spent the night there, and killed eighty-eight monsters before I came out," Quistis said.
"That... that's incredible!" Tia gasped. "I always thought it was your squad that had that many kills, but it was you alone? That's... Well, there aren't any words for that."
"But you can see why I say that your first mission isn't about success or failure. It isn't an indicator of how well you'll do as a SeeD. It's about teaching you a lesson."
Tia nodded. "But there's one thing I'm still confused about. Why didn't all this come out on your mission report? I mean, the story of your first mission is legendary. How do you account for the discrepancy?"
The squad stood assembled before the gates of Garden, Quistis looking over them from one of the higher steps.
:"Okay, we all had a lousy time, and here's how it's going to be: none of us talk about this. Ever. I am going to file a mission report that says the tent was broken when we tried to put it together, so we slept in the open, but other than that, the rest of the mission went according to plan. We spent the night hunting monsters and have eighty-eight kills between us. None of us disputes the report and none of us mentions this sordid little affair to anyone as long as we live.
"I want you all to remember one thing – I don't like to bring it up, but I'll make an exception here – the one thing is this: I'm the best cadet to ever pass through this Garden. I'm the best there ever will be. And I'm not letting this get in my way. More importantly, if I find out that any of you talked, I will use my abilities to hunt you down, gain access to wherever it is you sleep, kill you, and make it look like an accident. If you doubt I can do it, remember who I am, and look into my eyes. I can, and I will. You talk, you die, and not in some lame metaphorical sense. I. Will. Kill. You. This mission – and this chapter in my life – is now over."
So saying, Quistis turned on her heel and stalked back into Garden, leaving the three young men to stare at her back, dumbfounded.
"Not my finest moment," Quistis admitted.
"Hey, if it makes you feel any better," Seifer offered, "it worked. None of us ever talked. Even Zell, and you know how he is with secrets."
"Okay, kids" Nida's voice crackled over the intercom, "we're setting down. Get your gear and that ugly monster carcass and let's go home."
Tia ran ahead to go file the mission report as Quistis and Seifer walked side-by-side down the gangplank.
"You know," Seifer said, "if not for your photographic memory, I'd think you left out the best part of that night.
"How could I forget?" Quistis replied.
Surreptitiously, Quistis crept back to the campsite, making sure the three junior cadets hadn't moved from their positions. When she'd checked up on them, she resumed her patrol, scouring the surrounding area for monster activity.
A short distance away from the site, she crossed paths with a T-Rexaur. The enormous dinosaur scented her at once and bellowed its challenge. Mad at the world, she roared back, pouring her rage into her voice.
I don't even care, she thought. Let the damn thing eat me.
The monster came for her, dipping its neck low and trying to bite her. She lashed out with her whip and caught the monster on the tongue. Not terribly damaging, but certain to hurt like hell. She struck again, twice, taking out each of the monster's eyes, leaving it completely open to whatever further attacks she wanted to unleash.
She danced to the side and hit the monster in the flank. It whirled around, trying to find the source of the attack. Quistis had to duck to avoid its flailing tail.
Suddenly, the monster erupted from the inside, its entrails falling to the ground.
She stared in wonderment as the beast toppled over. Kneeling, she examined the wound – a long slice, as if from a sword. Then, from behind her:
"So, you gonna thank me, or what?"
She stood up, whirling around to find Seifer, standing with his gunblade over one shoulder. She launched herself at him, knocking the gunblade out of his hand in the process.
"What are you doing away from your rock?" she roared, suddenly screaming as loud as she possibly could. Her fists beating against his chest. "Why aren't you at your rock?" she asked, voice softening as she broke into tears.
"Shhh..." he said. "Hey, calm down, okay, blondie? Don't cry. Come on. What's wrong?" He led her off to sit on a log, away from the corpse of the massive dinosaur, which had already started attracting flies.
"Everything... This mission," she sobbed. "Just... everything."
"Well, I know things aren't going exactly to plan, but we're all surviving. That's a big plus, right?"
"No. I was supposed to go on this mission with Squall, and then Alekhine screwed it up, and nothing's gone right, and you and Zell are fighting, and I don't know how I'm going to live up to this back at Garden, and I just wanted to be alone with Squall and now everything's ruined!"
"Oh," Seifer nodded. "You wanted some alone time with Squall."
"Yeah."
"You know, Squall's not exactly the greatest guy. He's kind of... boring. And he doesn't seem to know too much about women."
"That's okay. I don't know too much about men."
"Well, he doesn't even know when he's got a great girl who wants to be with him."
"Yeah, tonight really proved what a great girl I am."
They sat on the log in silence, Quistis beside Seifer. Minutes passed, and neither said anything.
"Quistis?"
Quistis turned to face him. "Yes?"
Seifer kissed her.
As simple as that, he just kissed her. One moment they just sat there, sharing the night air. The next moment, they had their lips pressed together, the taste of her tears salty between them.
It lasted for only a moment, and then they separated. Seifer blinked a few times, looking at Quistis.
"I'm... I'm going to go back to my rock now."
And then he vanished into the night, leaving Quistis alone. She sat there for a few minutes longer, changed somehow, before she stood up and resumed her patrol.
"My first kiss," she said.
"Mine too," smiled Seifer.
"And yet, somehow, we've never spoken about it until today."
"Have you ever told anyone?" he asked.
"No."
"Me neither."
Quistis laughed. "I'm sort of glad. I don't want Zell to get jealous of me."
"I can see that," Seifer grinned. "He can get a little... overzealous... sometimes."
Quistis groaned. "Here we were having a nice sentimental moment and you had to ruin it with a cheap pun."
"What can I say? Some of us have to compensate. We can't all kill eighty-seven monsters in one night."
"Eighty-eight," Quistis said, meaningfully. "It would have been eighty-nine."