Chapter 4

Rinoa's train ride home is much improved from her previous two journeys along the same track. She shares a compartment with a young couple from Timber, returning from their honeymoon in Balamb. They make polite conversation about Timber and its various resistance movements for a while, but soon the talk diminishes to the sounds of the train, and the clicking of Rinoa's fingers on her laptop keyboard as she writes an email to Zone, summarizing her interview with Balamb garden's headmaster.

Cid:

(From Cid Kramer's report to the SeeD Advisory Board (SAB, dated 11/02/42 ))

I can't say I was not impressed with Ms. Heartilly's persistence. Few would-be clients of SeeD travel hundreds of miles on the chance that a written request that's been dismissed multiple times will be accepted in person. I imagined when she first introduced herself and explained her proposal that she'd intended to coerce, charm, or seduce me into accepting her faction's request. This is common enough in would-be female clients with shallow pockets.

A few minutes of conversation convinced me otherwise. She was flustered when she introduced herself, but as we began talking, and she started to describe to me the oppression of Timber's local businesses under Galbaldia's occupation, her apprehension became a kind of passionate indignation. Her sincerity was striking. Though I understand that a proposal with no statement of the client's intended use of employed SeeD agents, this is a young organization with nebulous plans, pursuing a noble cause. Though Balamb Garden is a business enterprise, it is also a human one. With this in mind, I'd like to render my full support to the approval of SeeD Aid request #7094, submitted October 30nd, 1042…

Clearly, a novice in the business world. I explained to her that, while I sympathized with her cause, circumstances would not allow for the approval of such a request. Without even considering the money being offered, her faction's plan made garden's involvement all but impossible. For the SeeD program to be identified as connected to what she had in mind would be disastrous for garden. We talked for another hour. The next morning we met in my office and drew up a vague contract that did not state the faction's intentions for the use of our SeeD members. Ms. Heartilly left for Timber with her approved contract the following evening.

None of the Forest Owls are waiting for her at the train platform. A little disappointed, Rinoa says goodbye to the newlyweds and sets off for the Owls' mobile base alone.

She steps down from the train platform carrying her suitcase in one hand, her Blaster edge folded at her hip. The town seems more dilapidated than it did when she left, though she's been gone only a few days. Maybe it's shabbier than she remembers it? And there seem to be more Galbaldian officers patrolling the streets; she counts three pairs between the train station and a bridge overlooking the tracks, where a young man in a blue sweatshirt stops her to make stuttering conversation about the weather. As a kind of icon of the liberation cause, Rinoa is a local celebrity, and accustomed to being approached by strangers. The man in the sweatshirt gives her a plastic pill box containing a potion capsule and quickly excuses himself. When he is out of sight she pitches the capsule into the nearest garbage can. There are plenty who resent the liberation movement too, though few live in Timber.

The Owls' base looks deserted. Lights off, doors locked. Rinoa knocks the rhythm of the first two measures of a pop song on the door. After a minute, the shutters of a dirty window next to the door open and a male voice asks,

"Password?"

"Foxtrot-Oscar."

A short, pale teenager in jeans and a tee-shirt, wearing a blue handkerchief over his head opens the door. "Watts!" Rinoa exclaims, dropping her suitcase to throw her arms around him. "Miss Rinoa! Everyone was so excited to hear the news! No one's in just now, but Mr. Zachary should be back any minute." The entrance room is completely dark, with no light from either the strategy room or the hall leading down the base, and all the blinds shut. Standard procedure for an anti-government faction. Watts heads for the back of the base, while Rinoa sets her luggage down in the entrance room. "Watts, I think I'm going to go lie down for a while. Long train ride. But wake me up if Zone gets back okay?" Rinoa calls. "Certainly" comes the faint answer from the other end of the base. (Watts is making lot of noise, whatever he's doing). At the nose of the base, the sounds of something heavy being dragged and clanging metal are clearly audible.

Rinoa sets off down the dark corridor flipping light switches as she goes, enters the last room in the hallway. Her room is more nicely furnished than the rest of the train car, with pale pink walls, a pink carpet, and a bed with pink curtains and sheets. Rinoa makes a face. The room had belonged to Zone's sister, when the Lindgren family lived in the train car with Jake Lindgren. When he'd been alive. When the family moved out of the base she'd left the bed and pink carpeting. Rinoa had brought her own desk and chest of drawers by train, from her father's house.

She tosses her suitcase onto the bed and sets the Blaster edge's small case on top of the bureau. She wishes, for the millionth, that she'd learned to wield a more practical weapon. Her father had insisted on the Blaster edge, however, because it was easy to handle, could be used as a handheld weapon at close range when folded or fired from a base on her forearm from a distance (the point of which is…?), and was light enough to be folded in half and stored in a purse, or clipped to a belt. It wasn't intended to cause serious injury – just to incapacitate an attacker long enough for the attacked to run away.

Rinoa knows she should be elated, at least happy, as she starts to unpack her clothes. She takes out her cream colored dress, smoothes it out (that SeeD with the eyes…), hangs it in her closet. But something is nagging at her. Maybe something about coming home to a dark, almost deserted base. She takes off the jeans and sweatshirt she traveled in, puts on her usual black biker shorts, denim skirt, black tank top, light blue duster. Strange that no one waited to welcome her back, especially after her big news. The duster and its matching arm warmers are hand-made, from a tiny Timber store called "Angel Wings". Appropriately, it features two white wings on the back.

Rinoa finishes unpacking and shoves her suitcase under the bed, lies down, throws an arm over her eyes. It's not the empty base, really, that's bothering her. It's something about the time she'd spent with Seifer. (What was I expecting, anyway?) Maybe that he would have passed his field exam, for one. She'd expected him to be at the inauguration ball, to help her make her pitch to Cid Kramer. But then, it wasn't really his fault he hadn't been at the ball; he'd been in disciplinary confinement. (It was his fault, though) says a nasty voice in Rinoa's head. (He went against orders on the field). The other boys Rinoa had dated, for longer periods than a few months, had not left as much of an impression on her as her summer with Seifer had.

(That's understandable. He's not like those other guys. He's funny and confident. And he's driven like me. He didn't think I was crazy for wanting to liberate a city under Galbaldian control. And he didn't assume I'd be a shallow, high-maintenance general's daughter. And he made me feel confident too. Like I really could liberate Timber – like his plan talk to Kramer at the inauguration ball must work because he believed it would …) He expected to get what he wanted, and by extension, what she wanted.

But Seifer was clearly not infallible. Rinoa had been hoping that maybe he might be among the team to work with the Forest Owls. Now there is no chance of that…

"Miss Rinoa!" Watts calls excitedly through the door. Zone is back.

Rinoa gets up, straightens her twisted duster. She accompanies Watts back down the hall. Though the blinds are still closed, the lights make the hallway seem more awake.

"He's in the entrance room, just walked in." says Watts.

When they reach the end of the hall, a small crowd, including Zone and his mother and sister, Watts' two brothers, the other members of the Forest Owls and several of their friends and relatives, and a few members of other factions greet her with a lot of cheering, chatter, and a smothering hug from the Forest Owl members punctuated with shouts of "Surprise!" and "Congratulations!". A small banner made from a bed sheet and fabric paint hanging above the entrance door reads Congratulations Miss Rinoa. On the other side, showing through the white fabric a bit, it says Happy 20th, Bill. Rinoa laughs, greets everyone, is genuinely happy.

When the excitement settles down and everyone goes back to socializing and drinking, Rinoa makes her way to a fold-up table, uneven because one leg is shorter than the others, precariously balancing bottles of wine, beer, soda, and chips. She nibbles on a chip, facing the wall, and a tear rolls down her cheek, and drips onto the snack table.

"Miss Rinoa?" Watts says, appearing beside her.

"I'm fine, I'm just happy." she tells him, shaking her head and waving a hand. She finishes the chip. "I mean, SeeD is really going to come help us." She turns to Watts, eyes shining and excited. As though realizing it for the first time,

"We're really gonna to do this!"

A/N: These early chapters are intended to be "digestible", that is, short and concise. Later chapters will be a little longer. Trivia: Foxtrot-Oscar is "F-O" in the international alphabet. It stands for "Forest Owls". Please R&R

DevilMayCare