Summary: Things aren't always what they seem. People aren't always who you think they are. The Second Sorceress War through the eyes of Seifer Almasy.

A/N: A series of chronological one-shots describing Seifer's thoughts and feelings during the war. Something I came up with when trying to plug some inconsistencies in the game in a more creative manner than to designate them as 'mistakes in the script'.

Warnings: For now just hints at platonic and probably unrequited shounen-ai (boy-love, that is)

Disclaimer: Listen carefully, I shall say this only once: I do not own the characters, I do not own the game's story. Squaresoft does. And I'm still not making any money with this, either. Damn.

Part 1 – Calm before the storm

It was still dark outside. The display of the clock on the paper-filled desk dutifully informed that it was ten past 5 in the morning. Yet Seifer Almasy, one of Balamb Garden's senior cadets, was wide awake and in full combat outfit.

Tapping one finger impatiently on the side of his chair, he waited for the telephone to establish a line to the other side of the world. It rang once, twice…

Beep 'This is the answering machine of Edea Kramer. Please leave a message aft…'

Angrily, he slammed the receiver down, terminating the connection.

He rubbed his hands over his face. No response, again. He had tried to contact Matron for the past two weeks, but all he'd ever got was the damn answering machine. He'd left a message the first few times, and usually she'd call him back within a day or two. But he hadn't heard so much as a whisper from her. It was as infuriating as it was alarming.

He took a deep breath and tried to get a clear mind.

"Okay, Seifer, calm down and review. What have we got so far?"

Too much weird things to be circumstantial, that much was clear.

First of all, there was this voice chanting incomprehensible words at the edge of his consciousness. It seemed to home in on his Fire Mage abilities. That meant that the source had to be magical. Not paramagic, but true, full-fledged magic powers like Sorceresses had. That was, after all, how he'd got his share of fire magic.

But that he had received a fragment of a Sorceress' magic didn't mean that he was a Sorceress in the true sense of the word. And that meant he had no clue to what the chanting was supposed to mean. He'd wanted to ask Edea if she knew what it could mean and where it might come from. After all, Matron was a Sorceress.

Which brought him to the second curious event: Matron had disappeared, or was at least incapable of receiving or at least answering any messages. Even Headmaster Cid, who was her husband no less, had not been able to contact her these two weeks.

Both those occurrences worried him, although neither had caught him so off guard as Squall's new outfit. Usually his rival's fashion sense was not his top priority, or even remotely interesting, but the new black leather-look was disturbingly familiar. Yes, and a bit too 'camp', too.

The important thing was that it all seemed to connect to the events of a sunny summer afternoon some thirteen years ago. The connection was not always obvious, but his instinct told him it fitted together in some as yet inexplicable way.

Thirteen years ago. He had been all of five years old, and the oldest boy in Matron's orphanage. He remembered the other kids who had been there. Squall was one of them, too, although he'd forgotten about it now. The group had been playing hide and seek, but Squall had run off again, as usual.

He had hid himself in the bushes near the front door, and because of that, he had witnessed how Matron had run out after Squall, and how she had been stopped by a young man who had appeared in the front garden quite miraculously.

Closing his eyes, he could see it all before him, even after all this time. He could remember how Matron and the young man were talking on the lawn. And the flash of light which had blinded him just before a white-haired woman in a red dress and with tattered black wings had appeared.

Her arrival caused quite a reaction: the young man was a soldier, as it turned out, and he drew his weapon the instant he saw her. That image was etched into his mind even more clearly than the rest of it. If he concentrated, he could recall the how the blue glow of the man's gunblade illuminated every crack and tear in the black leather jacket and trousers he wore. The shine had also reflected on his metal belt buckles –of which there seemed to be ridiculously many-, and the heavy metal pendant he wore around his neck. The memory was so detailed it was creepy.

The pendant had been shaped like a lion's head, he recalled. Just like the pendant Squall wore together with his new black leather outfit these days. Involuntarily he bit his lip. He remembered Matron telling the young man that 'there was only one Squall permitted' at the orphanage.

Coincidence? He'd never considered that. There was no doubt that the young soldier was the man that little Squally would grow up to be in thirteen years time. That meant, the man he was now…

His powers, or rather, that red-clad Sorceress' powers, had verified that to him the moment he received them. Because the strange woman had been a fatally wounded Sorceress in search of a host to pass on her powers to, so that she could die. Edea, already a Sorceress herself, had agreed to be the recipient of those powers.

From where he had hid himself, he remembered seeing a lot of purple balls shooting from the woman's body and into Matron. But one of those balls had taken a different course, and had hit a little five-year-old boy square in the chest.

Wistfully, he turned his hand up and willed a ball of flames to form there. Fire magic. Not the paramagic variant that Garden taught its students to use in combat, but the full-fledged magic of a Sorceress. No incantations were required, nor the abilities of a Guardian Force. Just sheer will power controlled it. Matron had called him a Fire Mage.

Staring into the flame, he recalled the moment the powers impacted. There had been an instance of nothing. Calm, quiet, silence. And a few shreds of thoughts, as if the magic had a consciousness that spoke to him on a very basic level: The Sorceress had had destructive intensions, but she had died at the hands of a group of powerful soldiers. Incomplete notions flooded him. Battle, despair, betrayal, blood, and a lot of magic. And then the pain had set in and knocked him flat out.

At the flick of a thought the flame disappeared.

That was how he knew how the battle would end, but he wished he knew whatwas going to happen between now and thenAnd whether what he had anticipated was really what was going to happen.

Dread settled heavily on his stomach. Everything he had done in his life, he had done bearing in mind the prospect of Squall battling a Sorceress some time in the future. And some of it had been pretty harsh. He didn't dare to think of the consequences if it turned out now that he had completely misread the signs and falsely anticipated the future.

But on the other hand…

"Am I willing to risk giving in to uncertainty now and deciding not to see this through, while things turn out exactly as I anticipated they will?" he asked himself out loud.

He weighed the pro's, the con's, and the consequences, but quickly came to a decision. He was never one to do things half, anyway. Call it dedication.

He got up from his chair and lifted his gunblade from its casing. Stroking the black blade, a smirk tugged at his lips.

Squall knew how to fight. Garden, and their rivalry, had taught him that much. But what he needed to realise now was that true adversaries never play fair.

Outside, a thunderstorm approached.

I hope you like it so far. Please R&R to let me know what you think. Flames'll be torched by Seifer, but if they're sensible and constructive, I might take notice before he does so.