The group assembled in the hangar, standing in the shadow of the Ragnarok. Squall stood off to one side, disconnected from the others, his right hand clenched into a fist. Seifer held Hyperion to the light, watching it gleam as Fujin and Raijin flanked him.
Quistis entered and crossed to Xu. She leaned in to apologize to her friend.
"Sorry I'm late," Quistis whispered.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah," she replied. "Just... saying goodbye."
"Okay, everyone," Xu said, addressing the group. "We're all here. Nida, are the preparations complete?"
Nida nodded. "Discovery is loaded and the flight check is done. Give us the green light."
"We're all anxious to get airborne," Xu said, glancing at Squall, "so we'll do the briefing in the air. Board up and we'll get going."
The First Team started to board. Fujin started for the gangplank, but Seifer turned to stop her.
"Sorry, babe," he said. "You have to sit this one out."
"UNACCEPTABLE," she snarled.
Xu stepped over to intervene.
"Fujin, you're not part of the mission profile. You can't come with us."
"UNACCEPTABLE," she said again, a dangerous edge creeping into her voice. "PERSONAL."
"I understand that," Xu said. "Mallis has one goal: the revival of Adel. Two do that, he needs two things, you and Rinoa. He already has one of them. If we bring you into play, it's all over."
"BUT—"
"Fujin, look", Seifer said, turning to her and placing his hand on the side of her face. "Mallis's goal is to get Rinoa's powers into you. For whatever reason, he believes this will make you into some kind of... reincarnated Adel. As it stands now, he can't do that. If we get you two in the same place, he'll just start slaughtering everyone he can find until Rinoa gives up her powers. There are a lot of people in Garden, and we have to consider their lives as well. You know he'll slaughter them wholesale if he thinks it'll help."
Fujin seethed, clearly displeased with the persuasiveness of Seifer's argument. Nevertheless, she relented.
"UNDERSTOOD."
"And you," Seifer shifted his gaze to Raijin and crossed to him. Seifer reached into a pocket of his coat and produced an envelope. The back had a wax seal emblazoned with the cruciform sword. "Over the years, I've stashed away some cash. This envelope contains instructions on how to get to it. If – for whatever reason – we don't come back, you take her and you go to ground. You hide her. You protect her. You protect her. And if anything happens to her, I swear by all that's holy I'll come back from the grave and haunt you until the day you die."
Raijin nodded gravely, understanding his charge.
"Don't worry about it," he said, the normally boisterous tone gone from his voice. He put his arm around Fujin. "I'll guard her like... like..." He shook his head. "Don't worry about it."
Seifer wrapped an arm around each of his friends and they leaned in, the Posse literally putting their heads together. They stood like that for a moment, not speaking or moving. Then, Seifer broke away from them.
"Okay," he said, turning to Xu. "Ready to go."
Xu nodded, speaking to the group once more. "See you onboard."
The First Team boarded the ship with the rest of their gear. After stowing it, they all moved to the meeting room aboard the Ragnarok and took their seats as the ship left the hangar. Nida joined the group in the meeting room while one of his lieutenants piloted the ship. Xu took her place at the head of the room, putting her materials on the lectern they'd had installed for briefings like this one.
"Here we go," she said, pressing a button on the lectern. The window behind her darkened, and a display flared across it, playing a composite of images from the fall of Balamb Garden.
"During his time as Garden Master, Mallis had ample time to review Balamb Garden's defenses. In doing so, he came to the same conclusion Seifer did when planning the Garden Wars: Balamb Garden is subject to a sudden, intense siege supported by overwhelming numbers."
Long used to her style of briefing, the group allowed Xu her introductory remarks. Some other squads disliked her method of briefing, but most of the squads under her supervision preferred it to the Cid Kramer model of briefing. A model that included no more information than strictly necessary and left little room for questions or clarifications.
"In keeping with this model, he hit us with an initial wave of soldiers and let us expend our energy fighting them. When we started to mop up the first wave, he hit us again. After that, it was just a simple matter of deluging us with soldiers.
"Make no mistake: if we had one cadet or SeeD for every soldier, we would have more than won the battle. We would have routed them. Unfortunately, they outnumbered us badly. And as long as they continue to outnumber us, our efforts at retaking Garden are doomed to fail."
Squall, looking out the window, not listening to the briefing, glanced at Xu long enough to frown a little. Then, his eyes shifted back away from her.
"So we take out The Storm!" Zell said.
"Exactly."
"How do we do that?" Irvine ventured. "I mean, if the whole reason they won is because of overwhelming numbers..."
"Also true. They have a decisive numerical advantage. In this particular mission, we're looking at 2275 of them to 6 of us. Approximately 380 to 1."
Selphie's hand shot up as she looked around the room. "Six?" she asked. "But there're eight of us here."
"Squall and Nida have vital roles to fill, but are not a part of this mission."
Squall continued staring out the window. Nida looked shocked.
"Your help has already been invaluable, Nida," she continued. "And I have two more assignments for you. Hopefully, you won't have to carry out the second.
"The first is as the primary pilot of this ship. You will be responsible for piloting on the final approach to Balamb Garden."
"And after that?" he asked.
"You take this ship and return to Garden. And then you wait."
"That's it? You want me to wait?"
Quistis nodded, following her friend's reasoning. "Because if we don't come back..."
"Correct." Xu fixed Nida with her gaze. "If we don't come back, command passes to you.
"But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's brief the mission before we discuss contingencies."
Xu straightened her notes – unnecessary since they hadn't fallen out of order – and resumed.
"As I've said, The Storm possesses the advantage of numbers. This is also its liability. The Storm is simply too big to garrison at Balamb Garden. The Garden itself is guarded by a relatively small force used mostly to keep the hostages in line. A force small enough to render it vulnerable to our traditional methods of attack.
"The Storm itself is housed off-site. It is a reserve force, to be summoned once we arrive and used to trap us at Garden."
"We take them out at the same time," Seifer said.
Xu nodded.
"All well and good," Irvine said, "but I'm still waitin' for the 'how' of this little venture."
"Once again, the essential weakness of The Storm is its inherent nature. It has become a reserve force, to be summoned in case of invasion. We exploit this fact and turn it against The Storm."
Irvine spread his hands, still waiting for an explanation.
"Nida and I did some research into The Storm. It originally consisted of 298 ships."
"You told me 297," Quistis said.
"We were wrong," Xu explained, pressing a button on the lectern. The display changed, showing a massive airship, roughly the size of a small city. A fleet of The Storm's dropships swirled around it, dwarfed in comparison.
"This is the Cumulonimbus," she continued. "It represents the pinnacle of Esthar's military power. It was designed as a... mobile palace for Adel. It could house the entirety of The Storm, the Ragnarok and her two sister-ships, the body of Esthar's military and government... everything necessary to ensure the survival of the nation in case of, say, a revolution."
"But the nation didn't survive," Quistis objected. "I mean, if it had, Adel would still be alive and we wouldn't be here."
"The ship had numerous problems. It prompted the scientific exodus that led to the creation of FH. A ship of this size demands a tremendous amount of energy to function."
"Mayor Dobe was doin' energy research before he left Esthar!" Zell exclaimed.
"He was the chief researcher. Rumor has it that he solved the problem, but if he did, he took the answer with him to FH. Running on limited power, the Cumulonimbus made an easy target for the revolutionaries. In a concentrated attack, they broke onboard, stole the Revelation-class warships, and destroyed the ship from the inside out.
Now, the reason I'm telling you about the Cumulonimbus is that it comes into play again. In its first few missions, The Storm quickly fell prey to a problem of its own. The troop commands were handled from the cockpit of each individual ship. One pilot who had to fly and release the troops. With the help of a skilled sniper..."
Irvine made a gun with his hand. "Bang."
"The ships crashed to the ground, killing everyone inside. So Esthar tapped the original designer, who came up with the slave system."
No one asked the obvious question. Xu continued without missing a beat.
"This system allows any of the individual ships of The Storm to be controlled from one master control panel. They are all its slaves. If the pilot is killed, the operator at the control panel can continue to use that ship. The control is absolute. He can force the troops to deploy, control their movement, order them into formation, anything."
"And this control panel was aboard the Cumulonimbus," Quistis offered.
"Precisely. After the revolution, the time came to clean up the wreckage. When the new government retrieved the ship, they found that it had been gutted.
"Including the slave system."
"We use the slave drive and smash the ships," Irvine shrugged. "Not bad. Where do we go."
Xu shifted topics again.
"This time, we look at another revolution. Specifically, the formation of the Galbadian Republic. The revolution orchestrated by Llyriance.
"When the Republic formed, they found themselves in dire financial straits. The Delings were not economical leaders, and the nation was wildly in debt. It had almost no hard currency and the situation was getting worse. So they set out to rectify the situation."
Seifer laughed. "What, did they file for bankruptcy?"
Xu shook her head. "They held an 'everything must go' sale on an epic scale. Everything they could think of was put up for auction on the international market. Weapons and vehicles, works of art, sculptures...
"Many of the military items were purchased by Archimedes Arms, Inc. This is owned by Atlas Corp., a holding company. It doesn't produce anything – it just owns. It is in turn owned by another holding company. And so on, for about seven levels until you get to Kronos Ltd, a truly massive company with fingers in everything. If you look at what it owns, it's just an endless series of holding corporations. But if you follow a particular trail long enough, you wind up with Videlic Arms."
"Owned by Mallis," Zell said.
"Archimedes bought a great deal of military equipment, including several large installations..."
Selphie sat upright.
"Say it," she hissed.
"They also bought several decommissioned bases, sites that Galbadia had long since abandoned. Ostensibly, these would have been used as testing facilities."
"Say it," Selphie persisted, gripping the arms of her chair. "Say it, don't hold out on me!"
"I looked at the purchases made by Archimedes and checked it against the size of The Storm. Then, I narrowed the field using the power requirements for the slave system."
"You tracked 'em using a power bill?" Zell exclaimed.
"Quiet!" Selphie ordered. "I want her to say it."
Xu spread her hands. "What better place to hide a military base than a military base that's already been destroyed?"
"Booyaka," Selphie whispered, falling back in her chair and rubbing her hands together. "I'm goin' back there and I'm gonna blow that place to smithereens all over again."