Chapter 8:
Rinoa: I remember how we all cowered every time we passed Galbaldian patrols. If they didn't have reason to pay attention to our appearances alone – apparently the local patrol didn't know us on sight – we probably gave them one the way we walked past them with our heads down and arms crossed. Squall was as silent as always, but so were Zell and Selphie. To get to the TV Station's back entrance we had to pass through a tiny underground pub; our other option was to go to the back alley leading to the station by way of Timber's main street, which was always swarming with Galbaldian patrols.
The pub owner, Maya, was originally from Northern Esthar. She was a heavy-set woman with dark skin and black hair, which she dyed red with henna. She was trying to convince a drunk slumped at the base of her back door to move when we arrived.
She said "namaskar" and asked in Chali if we were behind the attack on the news. I said "hain" and Selphie and Zell exchanged dubious looks. Squall didn't seem surprised; I wondered if he spoke Chali. Most of the world operates in English Common now, but local languages endure in some places, and I've always had a kind of knack for learning them.
Since we needed to get out the pub's back door to get to the TV Station, and didn't want to draw attention to ourselves by dragging the drifter away from it, Squall bought him a drink and put it on the bar. He grumbled about disrespectful young people, but he moved to get his drink and Zell, Squall and Selphie went out to the back alley. Maya held me back, said "dhannabad" and tried to give me a few Gil, which I refused. That's one of the great things about Timber residents – they'll give their time, money, or whatever support they can to the resistance movement, even if they aren't part of a faction. It occurred to me how proud she would be to see our broadcast. "Keep your television on a local station for an hour or two." I told her in English, before leaving the bar. I figured that maybe, if we could pull this off, then hiring the three SeeDs wouldn't have been a complete waste, even if they hadn't been much help so far. I checked that the declaration speech Zone and I had written was still in my pocket. Maybe the three SeeDs would take us seriously now, too. Zell, in particular, and to some extent Selphie obviously didn't. They probably considered our faction beneath them.
The four walk down the grimy alley in silence, pass through a rusty gate, and climb the steps leading to the upper floors of the TV station. Rinoa is so focused on the ground in front of her that she doesn't notice the huge television screen mounted at the top of the steps until Selphie points it out. She recognizes it as the screen used for public announcements. It's visible from the main street of Timber, and from Town Square outside of Timber Maniacs.
As Rinoa reaches the top of the stairs, the giant monitor lights up starts to make a buzzing sound. Black and white static plays over the screen.
"I thought…the station is supposed to be closed down until tomorrow…" Rinoa says. The SeeDs shrug and shake their heads.
"Then…there are already people inside? Hang on." Rinoa rushes up to the door to the station and listens at the door. She can barely hear talking and movement within. Feeling overwhelmed, Rinoa returns to the others. They don't look as anxious as she feels. Selphie is sitting on the railing, swinging her legs. Zell is leaning against it with crossed angles. Squall stands with his arms folded, staring at the ground.
"They weren't supposed to be open until tomorrow…" she says helplessly. The SeeDs are silent. "So we can't just rush in...We've gotta come up with a new plan now…If the president leaves, maybe the guards will be gone, too? Then we can do our broadcast. It might not be as influential but it's better than nothing, right? We don't stand a chance if we take 'em head on…right?"
"Don't worry about us. We'll fight your enemies based on your decision." Squall says impassively. "That's our duty." he adds after a minute.
"You tell us to go, we go. Even if it is a losing battle." Zell adds. Selphie says nothing.
Rinoa shakes her head. "How sad...Act on my decision? That's your duty? What an easy life it must be, just to follow orders..." (Seifer never thought that way. He'd never give himself over to someone else's discretion and take whatever came of it. He'd probably have stormed the station by himself. But look where that attitude had gotten him…no closer to becoming a SeeD. Maybe that really is how the life of a mercenary has to be.)
"…to believe that you can do it, though..." Squall was saying. Rinoa replayed the last few moments in her mind. He's said, "Call it what you want. All we want is for you to achieve your goal using our help. I find it hard to believe that you can do it, though... "
Rinoa took a step back as if he'd slapped her. "W-What did you say? If you have something to say, just say it!" Rinoa felt heat rising in her cheeks.
Squall told her to forget it, but she insisted.
"How serious are you, really? The four of us with rudimentary knowledge of filming processes try to broadcast a speech the day after failing to kidnap the president of Galbaldia. Your base is an abandoned train car." Squalls pale face flushes a little bit. "On top of that, you can't make a decision without our input, right? How do you think we feel, working for such an organization?"
It occurs to Rinoa that this is the most she's heard Squall talk since he arrived at the Owls' base. She fumes in silence for a minute, trying not cry, and wanting to scream. Selphie and Zell are paying attention now. Squall looks icily at Rinoa for a second, and then his expression softens.
"...Sorry. Guess I got a little carried away." he admits.
(No, go on! Go ahead and tell me that this faction is pathetic and you're all ashamed to be working for us, taking orders from me. Go on and say you're too good for us.) Tears of anger and frustration form in Rinoa's eyes, which she opens wider to keep them from falling. (We were all so optimistic a few days ago. Before the SeeDs got here we were all full of plans. Now things are moving way too fast. I can't keep up now…)
Rinoa spoke quietly, without meeting anyone's eyes. "You know...Maybe this was all a big mistake. I thought everything would work out fine once SeeD came to help us. But, I guess it's not that easy. You were all hired. It's not like you were one of us."
Rinoa collects herself, smoothes out her hair. She no longer feels like crying, just angry and let down.
"Um, let's see...We'll cancel the plan, and we'll disperse for now." she said authoritatively "We don't stand a chance if we take 'em head on, right?" She turns to head back down the stairs but circles back around when she realizes that the SeeDs are still standing in stiff silence behind her.
"So...you guys probably think this is all a game to us." she says tiredly.
"...Well, it's not. We're serious. So serious...it hurts." (Right now it hurts a lot. Without all those ambitions and plans to liberate Timber, what else do I have? I'm just some runaway semi-celebrity brat…I need to get out of here.)
Rinoa turns around and walks back towards the stairs, not caring this time if the SeeDs follow. They can do whatever they want; it doesn't really matter right now. (I just need to be away. I'll go to Zone's house…).
When she reaches the bottom of the stairs, the SeeDs aren't following, but the giant television screen above her is stuttering to life. The static noise and fuzz clears and a man in a business suit, standing at a podium surrounded by press microphones appears on the screen. The image is distorted by the angle of Rinoa's view, almost directly over the screen, but she recognizes the popular host of a late night talk show she can't remember the name of. She remembers him being melodramatic and patronizing and flattering his interviewees by turns, and slicking his blond hair back into a greasy shell on his head.
On the screen, his hair is naturally wavy and lighter than usual. He clears his throat and begins speaking into the nearest microphone with elaborate gestures and contrived excitement.
"Testing...1...2...Testing...Testing...Ohhhh! People of the world! Can you see me? Can you hear me? Oh, this is incredible! Ladies and gentlemen, this is not a recording! This is an actual broadcast over the air! Yes, it's been 17 years since a live broadcast has been possible! Oh, please excuse me...I seem to have lost my composure."
A laugh track plays in the background as he brushes imaginary dust from his shoulder and leans into the podium with anticipation.
"We would like to present to you today a message from the lifelong President
of Galbadia, Vinzer Deling. Ladies and gentlemen, President Deling."
An aging man in an expensive looking blue suit enters from the left of the screen. His slow, ostentatious walk makes Rinoa's stomach turn. He pauses deliberately in front of the podium, and then leans on it like a bartender leaning affably across the bar to speak with a customer. His bushy eyebrows and small eyes give his face a monkey-like quality. His ears protrude prominently through his gray hair. He addresses the camera in a slow drawl,
"Greetings. I am Vinzer Deling, lifelong president of Galbadia. Today, I stand before you to make the following proposition: We, the people of the civilized world, have the power to end all wars. Unfortunately, there are some trifling problems standing between Galbadia and other nations, and they must be resolved."
Somewhere off-screen is a loud crash faint shouting, which Deling ignores.
"I plan to convene with other nations' leaders immediately to resolve these problems. At this time, allow me to introduce the ambassador who will be my representative for the conference, the sorceress…"
(A sorceress as his ambassador?) Rinoa has time to wonder before a man enters the screen from the opposite side, carrying a gunblade in one hand, and extending the other like a shield. His blond hair, trench coat, and unique grip on his gunblade are unmistakably Seifer's. Rinoa sits at the bottom of the stairs, the wind knocked out of her. The screen, the stairs, the whole TV station feel surreal. She stands up again and begins to climb the stairs, as if in a dream, her eyes still glued to the screen, where Seifer is fighting off guards dressed in dark blue, wearing helmets and masks. The president is shouting to someone off-screen.
(Seifer, what are you doing here? What are you doing here!) Rinoa thinks over and over, though on a semi-conscious level she knows well-enough. Why else would Seifer be in Timber if not for her? He'd have found out when her request to Garden was approved, there were few secrets between students at Garden. Was this his idea of helping her? Even as she denounces it as lunacy immediately, Rinoa feels an irrational burst joy and gratitude.
Seifer is now dragging Deling away from the camera with one arm, poising the blade of his gunblade at the president's throat with the other. Rinoa wonders briefly why the camera crew hasn't stopped filming. They've probably abandoned their equipment…
A tall, blonde woman in a pink dress runs into the view of the screen, her back to the camera. "For the last time, stay back!" she yells at someone off-screen. "You're only going to provoke him!" She turns to face the camera, and Rinoa sees her face is flushed, her shiny blonde hair disheveled. She grabs one of the microphones at the podium, which shrieks in protest. "Timber Team, are you watching? Report to the television station immediately! You have permission! I need help!"
Rinoa reaches the top of the stairs and runs for the door to the station at a full sprint, but with no plan of action in mind. (Timber team? Whoever they are I'll definitely get there first…). The station's backdoor leads to a hallway that seems to stretch endlessly before her, lit with bright overhead lamps and lined with infinite, identical doors. (I could use the Seed's help now) she thinks miserably, staring at the hallway. She begins running again, passing doors and doors, her boots pounding on the carpeted floor. An elevator comes into view on her left. She skids to a stop, panting and wipes sweat out of her eyes. A panel to the left of the elevator says "Studio, floor 2". Rinoa jabs the down button on the elevator, stands with her arms folded for a second, and then throws up her hands and pitches through the door to the stairwell next to it.
When she reaches the second floor the struggle seems to be over. Galbaldian guards are running back and forth and kneel over fallen comrades on a deserted filming floor. The white screen behind the podium and the filming floor flaps dejectedly at a corner. Two studio lights on tall poles have been knocked over, one leaving the floor strewn with broken glass. Employees of the studio gather in corners, talking rapidly into cellphones. A female member of the camera crew is crying quietly into her sleeve.
Rinoa stands, taking stock for a minute. If Seifer is still here and alive, he's probably lost his grip on reality. She could be in danger here, she realizes, eyeing the corpse of one of Deling's bodyguards, lying in a pool of blood at the foot of the podium. Several guards and station employees look up at the sound of a shout from behind the white filming screen.
"Stay away from me!"
It is definitely Seifer's voice, but with a note of panic alien to Rinoa's memories of it. This is not the Seifer who had expected the world to make a doorway because he needed to get through. Rinoa crosses the chaotic filming floor to the white screen. She takes her folded Blaster Edge from her belt and cuts a long slash in it, from above her head to her knees, and steps through the opening. A low, melodic woman's voice is saying,
"Such a confused little boy. Are you going to step forward? Retreat? You have to decide."
The owner of the voice looks up sharply and narrowed her eyes at Rinoa as she enters. Her simple black dress clung to the curve of her hips and flared at her feet, where it brushed the ground. At the top it was covered in a small cape of black feathers, the neckline dropping several inches below the woman's pale collar bone. An elaborate headdress decorated with shells and beads framed her sharp, pale face, with dark eyes, small lips, and tiny purple veins in her temples. She looks like a queen of phantoms or the priestess of some dark, warped cult. Or, Rinoa realized, the elaborately dressed sorceresses in movies and on television. A sinister goddess surrounded by dusty cardboard boxes and framed by a black stage curtain hung behind her. A few feet from her, Seifer stands with the president still in his arms, held by the blade at his neck.
The woman raises a hand casually, and Rinoa feels her body go rigid, as if the air around her has suddenly become solid. She tries to move forward, to turn her head, and finds she can only breathe and blink. Every major muscle in her body seems to have frozen. She can feel her heart racing, and instinctively reaches to take her pulse, which of course she can't. Her knees feel weak, and she is distantly aware that if her legs could bend, they would buckle under her.
Seifer seems not to have noticed her; he is staring intently at the woman, his knuckles white around the grip of his gunblade.
"Stay back!" Seifer warns again, like a suicidal man on a bridge might warn by-standers, Rinoa thinks.
"The boy in you is telling you to come." the woman continues. She walks, glides, towards Seifer and the incapacitated president. "The adult in you is telling you to back off. You can't make up your mind. You don't know the right answer…You want help, don't you? You want to be saved from this predicament." She looks up again, and exhales through her nose, as if in exasperation. She flicks her hand casually into the air again, and Rinoa hears a sharp intake of breath beside her. "Don't be ashamed to ask for help. Besides, you're only a little boy."
A few feet from her, the blond woman who had told the guards not to provoke Seifer stands immobilized as Rinoa is, in mid stride with one hand over her heart. Her blond hair is pulled into a messy half-ponytail with long stands left dangling on either side. She wears a sleeveless pink dress over black pants and boots, several black belts, and maroon colored sleeves that from wrist to shoulder.
Next to her are Zell, Squall, and Selphie, the latter two with weapons in hand, but none of them moving. Recovering from surprise, and then relief at seeing them, Rinoa realizes that all three are frozen as she is. She glances back to the blond woman. Clearly she already knew Seifer. She had probably come with him from Balamb garden. If that's where he'd come to Timber from at all. Rinoa notices that, despite being wide and frightened right now, the woman's light blue eyes are very striking. She wonders if she's Seifer's girlfriend, with a remote pang of regret. Seifer doesn't seem to have noticed any of them. To the woman, he insists,
"I'm not a boy, sorceress!"
(Sorceress?) He addresses the woman with indignant respect, not the mix of fear and loathing with which one usually calls a sorceress by her title.
"You don't want to be a boy anymore?"
"I am not a boy!"
"Come with me to a place of no return. Bid farewell to your childhood."
The Sorceress advances on Seifer until she is inches from the president held in front of him. Seifer releases Deling, who falls to his knees, and then scrambles backwards into a corner, shielding himself behind an overturned crate. Seifer turns, for the first time acknowledging the people frozen behind him, and waves ceremonially to them, his gunblade slung over his shoulder. His eyes lock on Rinoa's for a moment, and he half-smiles. Then he turns, and follows the sorceress across the room. They pass the cluster of immobile observers, the sorceress without any acknowledgement. Seifer stops next to Rinoa and places a hand on her shoulder, before following the sorceress. They step through the tear she'd cut in the screen minutes earlier. The sorceress turns and gives another flick of her hand, then disappears. Rinoa falls to her knees.
Seifer: The sorceress was there, as she'd said she would be, but she did not help me smuggle the president out of the station. The first time I saw her in person I was surprised. She dressed traditionally. These days most sorceresses wear less conspicuous clothing. We followed the script she'd described to me more or less. She patronized me, I resisted, and I bid goodbye to my childhood. Then we left the station. She petrified anyone who tried to stop us on our way out. Guards rushed up to her with blades drawn or ordered her to stop from a distace. They seemed to ignore me. She petrified them with a wave of her hand and continued, and I followed her. When one of the camera crew fired at me with a plasma pistol from a dead guard's belt (still attached to the belt, in fact), she reached a gloved hand towards me and blocked the shot with a rounded, blue shield that flickered and then disappeared. After that she had me walk in front of her, and gave me verbal directions. "Go right. Ignore them, keep walking."
We walked right out into the streets of Timber and boarded a train. Once settled in a compartment, I expected her to say something. To tell me I'd followed the ceremonial script well (though I didn't understand the need for it), to tell me where we were going, or explain my new responsibilities. She stayed silent, so I did too, and watched the city go by through the frame of our wall-wide window. I wondered what the conductor had thought of her dress.
I met the sorceress two years ago, when she'd held a secretarial position at Garden. Allowing her access to the records of every student in the academy, the post was ideal for her search for an exceptional student with an independent streak, as I learned a few months later. It was years later that I learned she'd secured the position by killing an applicant with a better résumé. We met when I was sixteen.
When my feet started to fall asleep I kicked my legs up on the table between us in the train compartment and leaned back. The sorceress didn't move from her seat, but she raised a hand and I felt myself lift off the bench, suspended by the back of my neck as though an invisible hand had picked me up. My feet slid off the table. With no sterness or emotion she said,
"Show me no insolence, boy; I am not a secretary. You will learn that I am not dependent on you, in time. You are expendable. Replaceable. You will hardly even be of use until I have taught you certain skills…ways of thinking…"
She seemed to drift into thought, and let me fall back to the bench with another flick of her hand. The train rumbled on. I sat hunched over the table.
"Yes, sorceress Ultimecia…"