Zell: Man, I've got that electric feeling running through my body; I'm tingling with the current. I've made the call.

Whoo-whee!

Shadow boxing helps calm me down. I do it a lot, mostly like now, when I'm bouncing with so much balled-up energy I think my head might launch off. I'm grinning too hard. It grips my face like a vice as I work through my routine on the hotel steps, pushing myself. Snapping out those kicks faster, driving those punches harder;

Tomorrow

Snap

I

Snap

am

Crack

going

Smack

Home!

Launch off the crouch, triple flip slicing up through the air.

"Whoa!"

I loose a spark of Float and stay high, grinning down at a dishevelled Kinneas while he glares back up at me. I think the updraft might have knocked his hat off.

"Zell, what did I tell you about pulling that Zen-master ninja routine around me!"

He picks his hat up and dusts at it disgustedly. I don't know what he's wiping off. The floors out here are the same weird shade of clean as the rest of Esthar City. I haven't bothered watching out for Selphie's spat gum for a week.

Rinoa steps through the sliding doors after Irvine, out into the slippery steps that climb up onto the passage level. This side entrance leads straight out to the wall of the city. Kilometres below us, you can see the plain spreads out to the horizon. Gotta love the views here. I guess Rinoa's seen the whole hat thing through the glass- she's got that hand of hers across her mouth. We share a smirk as Irvine fusses with his hair, trying to get his hat cocked the angle he likes it.

I let the Float wear out and sink gently groundwards onto the steps next to him. As I land my nose gets a pungent whiff coming off him.

"Dude, isn't that illegal here?"

Irvine squints and scowls at me.

"Yes!"

Man, he's uptight, and it ain't the hat that's got all those feathers ruffled either. Why is Princess with him? I frown slightly at them. She hugs herself and looks aside, down at the polished stairs we're all standing on. Thinking on how to put something.

"You're going home tomorrow, right?" Irvine prompts, breaking the ice. We ain't at our best when we're leaving people.

I trade a grin and treat them to my version of a cheerleader routine- jig about on the spot waving imaginary pom-poms; "Man, Laguna had a special space-plane flight chartered just for me. I'm getting sun, sea, sand and two weeks of Ma's blueberry pies!"

Ma hates blueberries and never has them in the house.

"Gah," Irvine pulls a wry face "I'm spending two weeks in a building site so Selphie can show off her new trophy-boy to everyone in Trabia Garden."

Rinoa breaks into our banter at last, reaching out and tugging at my sleeve; "Zell, what time is the flight?"

I raise my right wrist and show her the SeeD tracelet strapped there, giving my best Diablos smile; "Eleven o'clock sharp. I just got off the portable to my mum. Dad's driving out in the new Trevis XV to pick me up. She said he's going to let me see how it handles on the way back. Don't worry; we got plenty of time for one last beer run!"

"Yeah."

I have a feeling my good mood ain't going to last much longer.

Her eyes seem to glitter at mine and for a moment I can sense the Sorceress lodged inside stirring. I look away from them quickly. Some things break even ninja focus, dude.

"Zell, we need to talk. I need you to help me with something and I might need a guy's opinion. Irvine's useless-"

"Thanks!"

Oh brother, this one came in right off my radar. I gotta get my piece in now, before I get dragooned into acting go-between.

"That ain't my arena, Rinoa. I never do relationship advice, especially when it's friends dating. Which you guys have since the ring thing- the thing that almost got me torched, man," I make a hopeful flapping gesture with my hands, "Maybe you can talk to Selphie?"

I'm glancing at Irvine for help here, and he's avoiding my gaze deliberately, the greasy cowboy bastard.

Rinoa frowns, put out at me for cutting her off; a picture flashes through my brain of her pouting and stamping on my foot. Weird thoughts, dude.

"Zell, this has nothing to do with Squall and me," she snaps "We're perfectly fine. Stop leaping about and listen for once in your life!"

"Rinoa wants to patch things up with her pa," drawls Irvine "She thinks you can help her with that."

What? What cracked switchboard re-routed that call to my number, man?

"Uhhh…"

Rinoa takes over with a shake of her head to Irvine; she's going to speak for herself on this one.

"You fell out with your parents didn't you Zell?" she asks impatiently "Irvine said they threw you out when you were in a gang. But now everything's fine. How did you do it? Did you change, or did they take you back?"

Diablos' burning balls.

Oh no, dude. This is not a conversation you and me are having. Not here, not ever. I pin her with my stare, and I know I've got this look in my eye, because even Princess falters for a minute. Irvine stirs nervously between us, fingers curling unconsciously for a cigarette.

Man. I don't think I've ever dented Rinoa's self-assurance before.

"You're asking me a lot questions I don't know if I want to answer," I tell her straight.

She takes a deep breath and starts again. What is it with Rinoa that she always pushes the questions she finds people don't want to answer?

"Until we all met," She includes the hotel and Irvine with a sweep of her hand, "I spent my time trying to make my father's life as unhappy as he'd made mine. Now... I'm just not Rinoa Heartly anymore. I've saved the world. I've become a Sorceress. I'm in love. Somewhere along the way I got bigger."

Now she's lost me. Weren't we talking about me a minute ago?

Irvine is shaking his head at her; "Nah, you were just born noble crusader for losers and lost causes," he says with a sly sideways look. Which gets him a firework smile, there and gone again.

Dude, you had no business telling her these things about me.

"Whatever," she says, and continues past him; she's lit up inside now, like one of those Estharian paper lanterns, "This doesn't change the facts. He and I, we're locked together over Timber still. Independence is coming, the only question is how. It's better if I can really talk to him, Zell, so he listens to me. Carroways have been redrawing lines on the map for centuries. If there's fighting…" Rinoa shakes her head at me, and her hair twitches like a curtain caught by the breeze, "I will if I have to. But we'll never speak again."

I reach up and trace the tattoo that scrawls down my face from my temple to my jaw, remembering the first time I'd woken up with it. Man, there was a bad day. Real downer in fact.

"Zell, I don't think there's anything magic that you're going to tell me, I just want a story that'll make me feel better because I'll know that someone, somewhere, got it right once."

I crack my knuckles and try not to chew my lip. Man, that whole last speech was pure Rinoa. Throw a block in her way and you're not fighting with her, you're fighting with her helping the world.

"Please?"

Man, sometimes you gotta realise that the fighting with yourself is just prolonging the agony over something you know you're already going to do. How does someone learn to broadcast that much naked appeal with their face?

"All right! Hyne! But it ain't very interesting… so don't ever tell anyone else. You're buying the beer."

The firework smile lights up her face again.

"Of course."

Now that's something I can agree with.