Author's Note: Thanks to everybody for the kind reviews. I've got the whole journey planned out already, and needless to say, it's going to be pretty unusual. ("FLYING, SEIFER! FLYING!" Ten gil and a cookie to the first reviewer to identify that one.) I kind of went overboard on this chapter, since my parents' reminiscences of 1960s America have been nothing if not inspiring. I can never resist an opportunity for farce.

Disclaimer: All disclaimers still apply. All FFVIII characters and concepts are the property of Squaresoft Inc., and I would appreciate not being sued.

Chapter Two: Love, Peace, and Limit Breaks

"Owwww, shit . . ."

I have GOT to stop waking up like this, Seifer thought as he swam back to consciousness. It was all a dream, right? Edea, Ultimecia, the brat and the chickenwuss, time compression, it was all a dream, this is just a bad hangover, it's all just the same . . . it's all . . . oh, fuck.

"SHIT!" Seifer yelped, jumping up- into a dense cloud of grayish-white smoke. "Shitshitshitshitshitshi- HACKHACKCOUGHCOUGHHACKCOUGH-t!"

"Whoa, you should mellow out, dude!" a nasally voice proclaimed from somewhere in the haze of narcotic fumes. "All that, like, aggression, has you, like, totally out of sync with the universe. You should just love everyone, and, like, the whole world loves you, right?"

"coughcoughRAGE!" Fujin screamed, from somewhere within the dense cloud of smoke.

"Wow, you too!"

"Fuji?" Seifer called. "Where are you? Is Raijin there?"

"I'm over here, ya know?" another familiar voice called. "My head feels kind of funny, though . . ."

"Hyne! Don't inhale, guys!"

" . . . WOOZY . . ."

"Fujin! No!" Seifer was starting to panic. "Stay with me, Fuu! Don't inhale! Don't inhale! Use Tornado! FUJIN!"

" . . . HAPPY . . ."

"FUJIN! TORNADO! USE THE WIND!"

"Like, wow dude!" another voice exclaimed. "All that negativity is, like, totally not nice! You should, like, love everybody, dude, 'cuz if it's all love then there's, like, no room for hate and negativity and stuff!"

Seifer's brain was starting to scream for oxygen, but he refused to take a breath. Fujin was already getting stoned by default, and he wasn't sure how long he could hold out. Raijin should be all right, but only for a minute or so at the most.

"Seif!" Raijin's voice called. "I found Fujin! She looks weird, ya know?"

A lightbulb went on in Seifer's brain. "Raijin! Exchange junctions!"

"What?"

"GET PANDEMONA FROM HER, DAMMIT!"

"But I-"

"DO IT!"

"Dude, what's Panda Mania? Is that, like, a Greenpeace thing or something?"

There was a swooshing noise as the Wind Junction transferred, and Raijin's voice was heard again. "Hey, Seif, I got it, but my compatibility sucks, ya know? And I'm starting to feel, ya know, kinda tired."

"Stay with me, Raijin!" Seifer yelled desperately. "Screw compatibility! Summon, dammit!"

"Oh wow, swearing is, like-"

"SHUT UP!" Seifer screamed at the phantom teenage voice. Frantically, he fired a few warning shots into the cloud. "Raijin!"

"Summoning, ya know?"

Barely clinging to the edge of coherent thought, Seifer waited desperately, feeling his brain beginning to shut down. Come on, Pandemona, he begged silently. I'm sorry I used your Tornado Sack to hold my laundry. I'm sorry I called you the gay icon summon of the year. I'm sorry I had Fujin summon you inside a crowded restroom during happy hour at the Tonberry Tavern. Please, please, please, forget your gripes just this once and show!

Finally, just as he was about to totally surrender to pot-induced delirium, he heard Raijin's voice through the dense cloud of smoke. "TORNADO ZONE (ya know?)!"

The air was too thick to see the green aura, but Seifer could hear a weird, vibrating musical tone which heralded the arrival of a GF. Pandemona burst forth, ready for anything- and abruptly began hacking as she entered the cloud.

"by the knights of round" the Guardian Force exclaimed in her weird, metallic voice- the one that always reminded Seifer of Fujin. "where the hell am i is this supposed to be some kind of joke almasy" One yellow eye fixed itself on the wheezing Seifer, then widened as realization dawned. "shit you're not kidding are you oh well TORNADO"

The pot cloud abruptly dispersed as the snakelike Wind GF summoned a mighty tornado, sucking the narcotic fumes into a skin bag. When the winds were released again from the bag, all of the marijuana elements had been cleansed from it. Seifer wiped his face, feeling his head beginning to clear again.

"That's better . . . thanks, 'Mona."

"i do what i can just junction me back to fu-chan i hate being summoned by that muscle bound lightning boy" Raijin made a rude gesture, or at least as close to a rude gesture as he could think of. (He stuck his tongue out.) Ignoring his grimacing compadre, Seifer took the opportunity as Pandemona disappeared to look around the new location.

They were standing in a grungy cellar, lit by a single flickering lightbulb embedded in the cement ceiling. Scores of sallow, pimply-faced teenagers were lounging on dirty mattresses, dressed in tie-dyed clothing and enough chunky plastic jewelry to crush a Malboro- apiece. A couple of them had typewriters, and a sloppy pile of handlettered demonstration placards leaning against the far wall announced "the staff of The Marxist Love Liberation Journal protest Rasism" in bold yellow-and-red lettering. Slumped by the pile of placards, a stoned-looking Fujin was twitching like a newly-poisoned cockroach.

"Like, wow," one of the teenagers observed, "This is, like, totally trippy, you know?" Flicking a silver Zippo lighter, he made a motion to relight the bong which Pandemona had put out. "Totally cool."

"NO YOU DON'T!" Seifer screamed. He'd been close to his Limit already, and that little brush with brain death had just put him over the edge. "FIRE CROSS!"

Out came Hyperion, fresh from the last fight, glittering as it seemed to anticipate the carnage. Seifer brought the blade close to his body, scar burning as he channelled raw power through himself. This would be soooooooo therapeutic. "ZANTETSUKEN-REVERSE!"

He'd only learned that Limit Break recently, and had used it against the GF who inspired it- to very satisfactory results. After long hours of training, he'd figured out how to exactly duplicate the effect of Odin's sword with his own gunblade . . . and now, as Hyperion was brought to bear on a straggling group of vulnerable twerps, Seifer smiled evilly. Who needed anger management counselling when you had people like these?

Twenty seconds later, Seifer was the only person standing in that room. Well, the only person who wasn't leaned up against the wall, clutching a bleeding limb. He scowled. Leonhart and his brats must have been getting to him- he hadn't killed a single one of the bastards. Merely a little selective maiming. Still, it had been fun.

"Let's go." Ignoring the moaning potheads, Seifer and Raijin picked up the woozy Wind Goddess and got the hell out of there.

"Aaaaaah . . ." Fujin lifted her head out of the fountain, water dripping from her matted silver hair. "That's better. Damn fuckups." Shaking her head like Angelo, she reached for her eyepatch. "Where are we now?"

Seifer grimaced. "1969."

"NOT TRUE. CAN'T BE!"

But it was. Witness the scene . . .

Behind them, a group of bell-bottomed demonstrators marched past, resolutely on their way to picket City Hall for the tenth time that month. Three or four couples were noisily and obviously making out on the grass, and a bright yellow van with green and pink flowers and peace signs on it was radiating rock music so bad that MiniMog couldn't dance to it, and that's saying something. More hippies were selling or giving away various 'underground' newspapers, and there were so many stoned people lying around- slumped in doorways, unconscious in the street, draped over fences and facedown in trash cans- that Seifer couldn't count them and didn't want to. None of them appeared to have a knowledge of the ancient and complex art of showering, either. Yuck.

"CRAP. TRUE." Fujin said, after smacking herself to make sure she was awake. "SUCKS. BIG TIME."

"Yeah," Raijin agreed. "What do we do now, ya know?"

Seifer sat down on the edge of the fountain, smirking a little. "No need to worry. Fujin, Raijin, I have just figured this whole thing out."

The two looked at him curiously. "WHAT (ya know)?"

The smirk grew wider. "OK, back in Egypt, Fuu explained the whole time compression deal- and the consequences. Since we've evidently ended up in an incomplete cycle of compression, we seem to be jumping through random periods of history. I don't know why that is, but we're doing it."

"Ultimecia's spread her power," Fujin interjected. "She probably put together a series of magical locks that hold this whole deal together while she finalizes everything. Leonhart and the brats are obviously breaking through them. Those breaks are causing the jumps. RAGE."

"Exactly." Seifer gestured with one gloved hand, indicating the world around them. "We are, in all events, quite helpless. Until puberty boy stops Ulti or time compression is complete, there is absolutely shit we can do about anything. So . . ." he paused. "Why worry?"

"COULD BE KILLED."

Seifer rolled his eyes. "Puh-lease. Not in this time, anyway. And you said yourself, back in Egypt- if the deal is sealed, then we're stuck wherever we are then. If not, we go back to normal. Great. My point being, we have to take this as it comes- why not have a little fun with it? Maybe bash in some heads, since we can't bash in Leonhart's?"

Fujin quirked one silver eyebrow and thought for a second. "STONERS, AFFIRMATIVE. COPS, MONGOLS, NEGATIVE."

"Mongols, ya know?"

"You're not likely to find Mongols in 1969, Fuu. If I see any, I'll tell you," Seifer snickered. "But I get the idea."

"ORDERS?"

"Yeah, what now, ya know?" Raijin added.

"First order of business . . ." smirk. "Let's see what those picketers wanted."

"FREE SMALLPOX! FREE SMALLPOX!"

"This is not happening, ya know?" Raijin groaned. "Isn't smallpox, ya know, a dangerous disease?"

"Yeah," Seifer replied, shaking his head at the mass of righteously enraged hippies. "Killed a neat portion of the world's population in its heyday. In our time, there's only one sample left- Esthar has it, I think. But it was still around- kinda- in the sixties, and officially classified as almost being wiped out. So I guess they're trying to save the endangered disease."

"NEW LOW," Fujin observed. "STUPID. CRACK SKULLS, WANT."

"I second that, ya know?"

"Wait." Seifer stretched out a hand to stop his posse. "They're starting a riot. This could be fun."

"What?"

Fujin nodded. "GOOD COVER."

"Maybe Tornado or Thundaga would be fun too, ya know?"

"TOO OBVIOUS."

"Awwww, man!" Raijin whined. "That's not fair, ya know? That's what you said in Egypt, ya know?"

"KNOW. SILENCE."

The cops had reached the first line of demonstrators, and were now attempting to subdue them without breaking some skulls themselves. The hippies, however, were having none of it- howling like a pack of bloodthirsty chocobos, they attacked the cops with vicious off-key renditions of "This Land is Your Land" and beat them around the heads with their NO MORE RACIST MEDICINE placards.

"Unbelieveable." Fujin said, lapsing back into normal speech again. "What the hell could cause this kind of mass silliness?"

"Drugs. Does it to 'em every time." Seifer replied. "Now, I think we've held our peace long enough. Fujin, my dear, if you would be so kind as to start the party?"

"Of course." Fujin raised her shuriken, channelling the now-familiar energies. "TORNADO!"

When the freak windstorm ended, only three people were standing- and they weren't cops or hippies. Fujin shrugged. "PARTY, STARTED."

"And ended." Seifer surveyed the mass of unconscious people. "Fuu-chan, I think you overdid it a little."

"CALIBRATION, WRONG. HIPPIES, TOO LIGHT. UNDERFED."

"Naw, not underfed, just too much granola, ya know?" Raijin said, detaching a rather odiferous one from his leg. "It makes 'em, ya know, kinda crazy."

"Hey!" said a voice. The Disciplinary Committee looked around, unsure of where it had come from; the protestors were still out cold, except for the few that were sitting on the sidelines and going "Dude!"

"Dude, down here," the voice continued. Raijin looked down.

"It's this one, ya know?" He said, holding up the hippie who had been clinging to his leg. It was a rather emaciated twenty-some male, as far as the D/C could tell under the layers of tie-die and dirt. The hippie gave them a wide, gap-toothed smile and held up two fingers in the 'peace' sign.

"That was totally fab," he said, looking awestruck as he stared from Raijin to Seifer to Fujin. "Wicked! Totally! How'd you do that? Magic, right?"

"Well-" Raijin began, but Seifer cut him off.

"No! Not magic. It was . . . uh . . . mental concentration, that's it. We've been studying the Egyptian Book of the Dead for years, and last year, it, uh, finally showed us . . . Nirvana," he improvised hastily. Crap! Even Seifer, the one student who could be relied upon not to listen in class, knew what mucking with history was. It had occurred to him that blatant use of magic might alter the time flow and . . . and . . . make it so Animal House XII: Return of the Squidpeople had never been made.

"Dude," the dirty human said enthusiastically. "Totally whoa! Can I, like, learn your secrets? Me and my clan have been trying to hit Nirvana for years, 'cause inner peace is so rad, y'know?"

"I don't think so," Seifer said shortly. "Raijin, put it down. You don't know where it's been."

The hippie grinned. "I got some wicked weed, man! I'll give you a toke if you teach me."

Fujin examined the teenager critically. "PUT DOWN," she told Raijin. "HAS FLEAS."

"Do not, man!" The hippie said indignantly.

Seifer's left eye was beginning to twitch. Fujin experimentally poked him in the ribs, then drew back hastily when his eyes started to glow. "YOU," she said, pointing at the dirty hippie, "YOU, GO. SEIFER KILL."

"Aw, man! Total bummer!" The grimy human griped. "Y'know, you guys are like way messing with my vibe. You got total inner peace and enlightenment and stuff, but you are soooo way negative! What's the deal, man?"

"Well, ya know, we're new here," Raijin offered hopefully. He was still holding the hippie by the back of the teen's grim t-shirt. "We're looking for a place to stay, and Fuji an' Seif are kinda wasted, ya know? Being magical makes 'em tired."

"Ohh . . . " the hippie said. A moment of silence followed, during which his brain was obviously working hard. "That makes total sense. You wanna come stay at my pad? I can give you a place to crash, and you can teach me how to be in tune with the Earth!"

"SEIFER," Fujin hissed. "RAIJIN. SPEAKS ITS LANGUAGE."

Seifer glowered. "Great. A dumbass convention."

"DUMBASS, OFFER PLACE TO STAY."

"Fujin," Seifer chided, "Are we desperate losers?"

"YES."

"I'll ask that again, soldier. Are we desperate losers?"

"SIR NO SIR!"

"What are we?"

"SIR! BROKE, NEEDING CHANGE OF UNDERWEAR, SIR!"

"Correct!" Seifer paused. "Wait a minute . . . say that again?"

"SIR! SOLDIERS! SIR!"

"Absolutely correct. And," Seifer added, turning to face his audience of one (1) underfed hippie and one (1) slightly confused Raijin, "what do soldiers do in times of crisis?"

"Dude, I know that one," the hippie piped up. "Me and my friends are, like, conscientious objectors, 'cuz the armys way messes with our peace vibes. Soldiers totally kill people."

"We don't kill," the blonde corrected him. "We requisition. And right now, in the name of law and order, we are requisitioning your place of residence, all local currencies available in said residence, and all alcoholic or fermented hops beverages which may be secured for the good of the state. Do you get me?"

"WE GET YOU SIR!" Three voices chorused. Fujin and Raijin stared at each other, then down at the teenager, who shook his head.

"Dude, you guys are totally out of it . . . "

TO BE CONTINUED . . .