Disclaimer: I do not own Final Fantasy VIII, its characters, or Resident Evil and its monsters. The priviledge belongs to their respective owners. I also don't own the quotes at the beginning of each chapter.

Ability is nothing without opportunity.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

It was a somewhat average day in comparison to what everyone had experienced previously. Most people were finally beginning to leave the safety of their homes in the wake of salvation and realizing that they were not going to be destroyed by the being who had caused havoc and chaos up until very recently. In response, the people of the world began to resume their normal daily activities.

The sky was a dark grey colour, though far more welcomed than the blood red colour it had been during the Lunar Cry that appeared twenty years too early. It was light enough not to cause darkened shadows to blanket the landscapes of Esthar, but dark enough that the threat of the sky breaking apart and showering those dwelling below with precipitation was taken seriously. Fortunately, it had yet to follow through with its threat, and the climate was at a mild temperature, not too humid or too dry, but not too cold or bitter.

Just under a week ago, the world had been under threat of extinction. Just under a week ago, civilians all over the planet had desperately feared for their lives from the threat of an oncoming apocalyptic power. Of course, they had not known how close to the truth they had been, however the Lunar Cry, where the sky had turned red and the lunar monsters fell from the sky, had been enough. People constantly feared for their lives after that, with monsters roaming the streets and searching homes for food. To them, this moment had signalled the beginning of the end, with Esthar having completely lost all of its power and thus rendering their advanced technology useless.

But this had all ended just under a week ago, when six individuals - four SeeDs, one sharpshooter, and the last a Sorceress - traveled through time to the future to do battle against the Sorceress who intended to destroyed them all, the one responsible for manipulating the people of their time in order to destroy it and to ensure that the world as humanity knew it would cease to exist.

Now, with everything said and done, with everything slowly returning to normal, Squall Leonhart could think of many things he would rather be doing than what he currently was. For instance, he would rather be fighting against the monsters roaming the Training Center back at Balamb Garden, or assisting with the monster extermination that was taking place at that moment. Or perhaps actually sort through all of the paperwork he knew was piling up on his desk back at home. In the end, he resigned himself to his fate, never complaining but considering to do so.

With his duties as the SeeD Commander, and Quistis studying to regain her Instructors License (which had been lost merely a night before the war had even started), the remaining four heroes had taken it upon themselves to 'liberate' their friends of their duties and attempt to get them to relax. Squall had tried to get out of it, but before he knew what was happening, he had already been on his way to their destination.

Now, he stood off to the side and as out of the way as he possibly could as he took in his surroundings, searching for exits that could be taken should a crisis arise. His friends and girlfriend had somehow managed to drag him into an amusement park in the guise of a Science Center. As much as he was flattered by their attempts to find something everyone, himself included, could enjoy, it annoyed him at the same time, because it seemed as though the entire population of Esthar's children had decided to venture to the same place on that exact day.

But still, the others seemed to be enjoying themselves, and he didn't want to be the so-called 'wet blanket' and spoil their fun, so he at least tried to look as though something was holding his interest. At least there had been an interesting artifacts display on weaponry back before the numerous metals everyone depended on had been discovered. Who would have known that stone was so handy back then?

Selphie had somehow managed to convince Zell and Irvine to ride some sort of spinning platform that rose up in midair every so often before lowering suddenly. From his count, she had continued the ride about five times now, repeatedly pressing the switch that would activate the machine before either Zell or Irvine could climb off. Quistis' attention was focused on an exhibit about prehistoric creatures and their role in society before man had taken over while Rinoa was fixated on an interactive display that looked like a black bowling ball with flying blue strings strapped inside. Upon placing her hand on the ball, Rinoa's hair suddenly flew out in different directions, the strands standing up in the air.

And Squall was trying very hard not to be bored.

Thinking about it for a moment, Squall suddenly recalled just how much he had changed during the Ultimecia conflict. Before the future Sorceress had made her move, Squall wouldn't have allowed himself to be subjected to something he didn't want to be subjected to, let alone trying to put a face of enjoyment on what clearly stuck out in his mind as boredom. He wouldn't have concerned himself with trying to please everyone else at his own expense, and would have probably hidden off somewhere in order to be by himself. This course of action would have been caused by his annoying care over how others perceived him; having made it easier to live up to everyone's expectations as the 'lone wolf'. It was truly amazing how so much could change in so little amount of time.

Squall allowed a small smile to appear on his features as he recalled the biggest reason for this change. Rinoa had definitely been persistent when it had come to Squall and his emotional shell, and as much as he had despised her attempts to get him to 'open up' at first, in the end he couldn't have been more grateful to her. Of course, Esthar wasn't built in a day, so there were times when he found himself reverting back into himself once in a while, and he honestly felt that, no matter how hard he tried to break himself of this habit, that it would be one thing, if not the only thing, that stayed the same about him. But he was getting better about it.

At least he hoped he was getting better.

Something brushed up against his right hand and it broke Squall away from his train of thoughts. He slightly turned his head in the direction to see Rinoa, gripping his hand with hers, all the while smoothing out her hair with her free hand. "You're not enjoying yourself, are you?" she asked, but even though the words meant disapointment, she still smiled at him.

"Am I that easy to read?" Squall mentally berated himself, for both having been discovered being bored and for making it blatantly obvious.

Rinoa nodded in response while tilting her head to the side. "I wouldn't be a very good Sorceress if I couldn't read someone properly, especially if that person is my Knight. Plus the frowning gave you away. What're you thinking about?"

Squall shrugged in response. "Nothing in particular."

Rinoa seemed to accept that answer for the moment before squeezing his hand with hers. "C'mon. I wanna show you something."

The SeeD allowed the Sorceress to drag him over towards the exhibit she had been at not to long ago. Squall easily distinguished that the display contained a ball filled with electrical currents stemming from the very center of its container.

Rinoa smiled sweetly at him before speaking. "This is a display experimenting the distribution of minimal electrical charges within the human body. This ball is supposed to represent the nervous system in our bodies. I remember learning about it when I was a kid."

Squall vaguely remembered learning about the exact same thing, but he couldn't be positive. Continuous exposure to the Guardian Forces had rendered his long term memory unreliable, and, unless prompted and guided, he couldn't remember a lot from his childhood. His short term memory, however, more than made up for this and he was pretty sure that if he had not grown accustomed to using GF's in his lifetime that his memory might have been a photographic one.

But even if he had heard the lesson before, Rinoa seemed extremely eager to show him how the device worked (though he was sure he already knew how), so he decided to humour her. This is the reason why he kept his mouth shut and listened to what she was saying.

"Our nervous system is like a bunch of electrical impulses, and they react to the slightest stimulate. This results in our responses to those stimulate. For example, if you put your hand on a burner while the stove's on, our nervous system would react to that stimulate by telling the brain that the body was touching something that was too hot. The brain would react by telling the body to remove the hand from the stove before any further damage could be done."

Squall definitely remembered hearing about this from a lecture when he was much younger; although the Instructors had never used one of those devices to demonstrate it. "So, what does this experiment serve to prove?"

"It shows you how the nerves in the body work, and when you think about it, it's pretty easy to tell which message the brain is receiving from the contact." With that said, she put her index finger onto the glass and one of the miniature lights jumped to touch it, the other lights still circled on their original courses, though much closer to the finger than they had previously been. After that, albeit slower this time, her hair began to stand up on its end as a result. "Although normally, your hair doesn't stand up on end when receiving this message. It's just the body's reaction to exposure of an electrical current. C'mon, give it a try. Please?"

By the time she was finished explaining everything, almost all of her hair was standing by its roots again. Squall didn't really want to comment on it, but it was just far too tempting. "You look like a porcupine." He deadpanned.

Rinoa sighed exasperatedly. "So? You're not supposed to look like a movie star with this thing. C'mon, just try it. Put your whole hand on it."

Squall shook his head and couldn't believe he was actually doing something out of request from another person (yet another thing that changed about him he figured) and removed the glove that was covering his right hand. Placing the unprotected palm over the top of the sphere, he watched as the little lights stuck onto strategic points of his hand, and he could feel the electrical currents running through his hand and up his arm. They weren't enough to cause him any harm, but they did start to make his fingers tingle, which did feel a little strange.

Out of the corner of his eyes he detected movement, and caught Quistis looking over in their direction. The former instructor had a hand covering her mouth, feebly trying to conceal the smile on her face as she tried to control her laughter. Removing himself from the contact of the sphere and reaching up to the top of his head with both hands, he began the process of smoothing out his own hair, knowing that Rinoa was following suit. Rinoa was done faster than Squall (which was an amazing feat as she had far more hair to deal with) and immediately stepped in front of him, waving the elder girl over. "Hey Quistis! You've got to try this!"

Quistis shook her head in response, while combing her fingers through the long strands of hair that stayed on either side of her face. "No thank you, Rinoa." She called over. "I'm perfectly happy right where I am. Besides, I have far more hair than either of you combined."

Rinoa laughed at the comment just as Squall finished making sure that his hair was not standing up on end anymore. He then took notice that Irvine and Zell had finally managed to pull themselves away from the machine that Selphie had gotten them on. Irvine was leaning against the wall, probably trying to make the room stop spinning, while Zell skipped that action and began crawling away from the machine as fast as he could, while trying not to bump into anything around him.

"You guys are such wimps!" Selphie shouted back at them while climbing steadily off the machine herself, placing her hands on her hips in exasperation.

"I think I'm gonna be sick…" Zell muttered as he continued his crawling.

Irvine attempted to stand without supporting his weight on the wall, but as soon as he began to walk, he nearly stumbled around in a circle before running into the wall itself. Rubbing his face with his right hand, the Galbadian smiled sheepishly, trying very hard not to make himself look any more the fool than he already did. "I think I need to sit down for a sec…"

"I think we should get moving if we're finished in this section," Quistis said, coming to stand with the rest of her friends. "Besides, we do have more ground to cover, and we should probably get back to the Residence very soon."

After the Sorceress war had come to an end, the Headmaster of Balamb Garden, Cid Kramer, had given the team a mandatory week of paid vacation to celebrate the success. In addition, the President of Esthar, Laguna Loire, had offered to accommodate them, as thanks for saving everyone's lives.

Selphie snickered at Quistis' suggestion. "You just wanna get back to studying."

Quistis blushed guiltily at the remark before Rinoa sighed. "Quistis, stop worrying already. You're going to ace that examination."

"You can never be too confident." Quistis argued. "If I become too sure of myself, I'll end up failing it, so I need to be positive that I'm ready for it."

"But either way, Quistis is right." Rinoa said. "I want to get to the 3-D cinema before it gets too late so that we'll have enough time to go shopping."

Zell and Irvine both openly groaned as Selphie cheered in agreement. Squall also frowned in response to the next plan, as he had already experienced Selphie and Rinoa's extremely aggressive shopping habits once the war was over. In their defence, all they had had time for during the war had been restocking their emergency supplies and they'd never had the chance to even glance at the other stores.

Just as they moved on, however, Squall caught movement once more from the corner of his eye, and when he turned around to confront it, all he saw around him was a sea of parents urging their children to get off the displays or showing them some of the more educational exhibits. Ever since they had come to the Center, Squall had had the unsettling feeling that they were being watched, but had yet to find the one who was spying on them. Frowning deeply, he left the room after a final look around, catching up to the others as he did.

Two hours had passed by, with everyone having found and examined other displays of interest. One of them had been a tunnel that was supposed to simulate the experience of wandering through a bat-infested cave. Selphie had mentioned something along the lines of not wanting to run into any vampires, and Quistis had assured her that vampires were nothing more than ancient folklore.

They also had walked past an exhibit with a group of teenagers around their ages, with a middle-aged man standing in the center and a man dressed in a uniform standing in front of the group, suggesting that the group was on some sort of field trip. This trip definitely stood out in Squall's mind as something to remember, as Quistis had found something intriguing about the exhibit and had asked them to stay for a minute before moving on.

"…Some serial killers are known to take their victims body parts after killing them," The guide had continued with his explanation. "Does anyone have a guess as to why?"

It was at this point that Zell's stomach chose to growl and all eyes (the students, the teachers, the guide's as well as his own friends) turned to stare at the teen in shock. Zell just laughed sheepishly before Selphie slapped him upside the head, telling him how disgusting that was before they deciding to move on. At least the kids with the guide had found it amusing and they had been able to hear sound of laughing little voices from around the corner they'd escaped down.

They had all decided to find some form of food after the incident (Quistis claiming that she had been so disgusted by Zell's stomach that she wasn't very hungry after all), and after that, they had continued their search for the cinema. Finally, they found it after stopping a few more times to look at the other displays, and just before they were about to go inside, Squall had the feeling that they were, once again, being watched. Turning around to see who was watching them, he wasn't surprised to find that the culprit had disappeared once again. He examined his surroundings, trying to find out where exactly the guilty party was hiding this time when a hand clamped down onto his shoulder, causing him to start in surprise and whirl around, only to see that Rinoa had made the initial contact. Keeping her voice down, she looked around her before speaking. "You feel it too?"

"Like someone is watching us?" Rinoa nodded in response. "Yeah. I've had that feeling since we came here."

"Same here." Rinoa admitted. "I would have thought they'd leave us alone after a while, but it doesn't look like they're going to. Maybe that's why Quistis wants to get out of here so quickly."

"Maybe…" Squall agreed. Quistis had been a SeeD a little longer than himself, Zell and Selphie. In fact, she had been his Instructor the year he had graduated. With this knowledge, he figured that Quistis must have caught on a lot quicker than the rest of them had.

"So what do we do?" Rinoa asked.

Squall didn't have to think about his answer for very long. "Let the others know what's going on, if they don't know already. I'll catch up in a minute. I want to see if I can find out who it is before you get back."

"Be careful." Rinoa warned before heading into the cinema to locate their friends.

Squall nodded in response to her retreating form before acting as though he were going to follow her into the cinema, before abruptly turning back around, and seeing exactly who it was that had been watching them.

It turned out to be a teenager; around his age if not younger. He possessed dark hair and light eyes, and was dressed casually in a pair of blue jeans, black and white running shoes and a white hooded sweater with a black stripe running horizontally across the front. He didn't appear to hold the profile of a stalker, but then again stranger things had happened to him during the last few months.

Frowning slightly, Squall folded his arms across his chest. "What are you doing following us?"

The other boy didn't seem to be paying any attention to the question, merely appearing to study his features before suddenly jumping backwards in shock. "Oh Hyne! It is you! You're one of those guys who saved all our asses after the Lunar Cry!"

Squall's frown deepened in response. He had run into this sort of thing all day, which was why everyone had quickly made their escape from the students at the serial killer display before they had followed suit. It was times like this that he really hated hero worship. It was something he personally could do without and he hoped it would have died down.

"Can I have your autograph?" the boy suddenly asked, breaking the SeeD from his thoughts.

Squall stared at him incredulously. "You've been following us all day just so you could have an autograph?"

The boy put up his arms in front of him as a gesture of defence. "I didn't mean to stalk you or nothin', honest." He said. "I just told my friends that I thought it was you guys, and they wondered if I could get your autograph. I sorta didn't wanna go back empty handed, so I followed you. I'm really sorry if I put you off or something. So," he said after a moment. "will ya do it?"

Squall took in a deep breath before letting it out slowly. If signing some stupid booklet was going to ensure that he'd be left alone for the rest of the day, then he'd gladly do just that. "Fine, I'll do it."

The boy nearly jumped for joy, and Squall was grateful that he actually hadn't (it would have caused a scene). He immediately held out a book and, after finding a blank page, he signed his signature before handing it back. Just as he was about to walk away, the boy's unsure voice stopped him.

Squall sighed once again. He should have known it was too good to be true. "What is it now?" he asked.

"Well," he said as Squall turned back around to face him. "those are my friends over there." The pointed over to the left of them and sure enough, Squall took notice of a group of teenagers, seemingly pointing and staring at them. One of the group members turned to another and whispered something, whatever it was; Squall couldn't make it out over the noise level of the actual center itself. The distance between the two groups was also considered a factor. "And I was sort of thinking…you know, to make them freak out…if I could…you know…shake your hand?"

Squall could put up with a lot of things, but he also knew where to draw the line. He wasn't some public serviceman or some politician who would drop everything just to acknowledge a fan. No matter how much he had changed, he was still weary of physical contact with his close friends, let alone with a stranger. But just as he was about to turn him down, what the boy said next stopped him. "I won't stop following you if you don't."

Squall sighed in exasperation. He didn't really feel like having an additional shadow following him around for the rest of the day solely because he didn't do what the teenager wanted him to. Alerting the security detail of the building would just cause more problems, of which Squall wanted to desperately avoid. He could have easily lost the teenager, but he didn't want to go through that hassle either.

Whatever the reason, Squall had no idea which one stood out in his mind. All he knew was that to get rid of the teenager, all he needed to do was extend his hand and shake the other boys. Slowly, he extended his left arm and the teenager gladly took it in response.

What happened next struck Squall as disturbing. Something passed through the handshake, from the boy into Squall's own body, and he had no idea how to describe it or if the other boy felt it too. It was an unpleasant cold feeling, holding a presence of foreboding that was being unsuccessfully masked by a somewhat soothing sensation. What startled him the most was that he had felt it somewhere before, but he couldn't recall from his spotty memory where or when it had happened.

He wanted to break the contact, but his body didn't seem to want to respond to his brain's commands. Instead, both of them just stood there for what felt like an eternity, as time seemed to move around them but slow in their general location. The strange feeling began to grow stronger, to the point where it was becoming exceedingly uncomfortable until the boy finally removed his own hand from the contact.

Taking in his surroundings, Squall realized that not much time had passed from before the strange handshake. If anything, it had only taken about a second. Before Squall could say anything about it, however, the boy beamed at him, thanked him for the autograph and waved as he ran off towards his group of friends. Before too much longer, the group had moved on, the boy still waving in his general direction.

Squall stared at his gloved hand, wondering just what exactly had happened. That cold feeling still lingered, as if sticking to his bones like glue. Clenching and unclenching it, if only to assure himself that he was in control again, he noted that the cold feeling had passed through his entire body. The feeling still lingered and he wondered just what it was about the boy that would cause such a reaction.

Turning back around to face the cinema, he spotted Rinoa approaching him. He decided not broach the subject, but he could tell that she had sensed what he had felt. "What happened?" Rinoa asked as soon as he was within hearing distance of her voice.

Squall shrugged it off. It was something that he would figure out later, and he didn't want to worry the others if it turned out to be nothing. "Just some kid who wanted an autograph." He assured her. When she didn't look convinced, he quickly added onto his answer. "He wanted to shake my hand as well."

The added on explanation seemed to appease Rinoa, if only for the time being, since she sighed in relief. "I was starting to worry when I thought you were panicking. It was just a handshake. Don't scare me like that."

Squall forced a smile, for her benefit if not for his own. "Sorry."

"But another kid wanted an autograph?" She laughed after a moment. "Aw… you're famous."

Squall merely rolled is eyes in response to her comment before changing the subject slightly. "Did you let everyone know what happened?"

Rinoa nodded. "And we were right. Quistis did know. She just didn't want to act out in front of all of these civilians. They're waiting for us in the cinema and Zell's convinced he found us the perfect seats. We should hurry though; it's going to start really soon."

As Squall followed closely behind Rinoa as they entered the building, all he could do was stare at his hand.