Chapter Forty-Seven:
A/N: I know, I know. I chickened out and made Fujin Adette's girlfriend instead of coming out of left field with something like Selphie or Dr. Kadowaki. Sue me. Words between these indicate Junonian. Mostly because I'm too lazy to actually go and create another language. (Seriously, the sewer scene was a complete pain to write.)
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Shiva's plan consisted of handing the other two GFs (Leviathan and Cerberus) over to Quistis so that she could get the full story from them. Simple, short, and no violence whatsoever. It almost disappointed Tessa. She took the ring off, but couldn't see Fujin.
I hate you. Would you just tell me who I'm supposed to give this ring to?
There was no answer from the GF, so Tessa merely thrust the silver band back on her finger.
Irvine was staring at her. When she gave him the one-finger salute, the cowboy merely smiled and tipped his hat. All Tessa wanted to do was take the hat and shove it down his throat so that he would choke to death. It appeared that Selphie had the same idea, only Irvine wasn't her victim. The object of her immediate hatred was a woman in her twenties who wore a white dress and magenta shawl. She also waved her arms around quite a bit.
#I'm surprised to find you still alive, Antessence,# a tanned youth drawled in Junonian as he sat beside the angry young woman. The scratching outside the building seemed to have no effect on him. #I trust you're doing well?#
#Doing well?# Tessa scoffed. #Hunter, look at me. I'm missing part of my fucking nose! So stop flirting and think of a way out of here before I kill you myself.#
"What are you two saying?" Quistis asked as she joined the two students. On her chest were two pins that hadn't been there when Tessa arrived at Garden. "Have you figured something out?"
"Well, Instructor Trepe, I have an idea. It does not involve escape, though," Hunter said with a wink. Quistis blew off his flirting and turned to Tessa hopefully.
"Miss Matleo, you do have much more experience with these things than anyone else. Perhaps you know something."
Do you want to disappoint her, or should I?
"Well, Instructor, there are a few things I've considered. It's all speculation, though," Tessa admitted. Quistis said that it was better than being in the dark, so the student continued. "These things don't attack each other, just the living and recently dead."
"How have you come to know this?" Hunter asked while placing a hand on Tessa's shoulder. She drove her elbow into his chest and he bent over.
"Miss Matleo!" Quistis said in shock. "I'm going to have to report you for that."
"Whom will you report me to?" the medic asked sarcastically. "Security?"
Quistis didn't respond and Hunter sat upright again, though wary of Tessa's arm. He scooted out of her reach, but remained close enough to converse with the two women.
"Anyway," Tessa continued with a shadow of a smile on her lips, "I believe that these things can somehow sense what's alive and what isn't. However, I don't know how that would be. My best guess would be that either our body heat gives us away, or they can hear our blood pumping."
"But why would they consume the, as you have put it, 'recently dead'?" Hunter asked loudly, drawing the attention of the other people in the lobby. "Surely their blood doesn't flow as ours."
Great, the asshole put me on the spot. I hate public speaking.
"Well, if I remember correctly, and I'm not sure as it's been awhile since I've studied the cardiovascular system, blood does flow for a few minutes after death. However, the most likely hypothesis is the detection of body heat. I wouldn't bet my life on it, though." Flashes of a freshly dead Tifa feasting on herself entered Tessa's mind and Shiva could be heard gagging.
"So how do we escape?" Selphie asked excitedly, jumping up and down. "There has to be some way to hide our body heat, right?"
Everyone looked at Tessa expectantly. The redhead looked to her Instructor, but Quistis seemed as enthralled as the others. "Well, I don't know if it will work, but the foam in a fire extinguisher might be able to do it. It's been done in movie sphere's, but you can't trust Midgar on anything. There's no way to safely do an experiment."
"I'll do it!" Selphie volunteered. "It can't be that hard, can it? Just spray me down and I'm out of here."
"No!" Quistis yelled, looking at Selphie with wide eyes. "You heard Antessence, there's no way of knowing if it'll even work."
"Let her," Squall said. The Commander of Balamb Garden stepped into the centre of the crowd, glaring at Tessa. He still had his gunblade in hand. "We're all dead anyway."
"Umm, never mind," Selphie said, backing down after hearing her friends' words. "I'll just stay in here if that's okay."
"I don't feel good, ya know?" someone complained in the silence.
"Hey! We need a doctor over here!" a man yelled. Immediately, all eyes locked onto Tessa.
I just can't catch a break, can I?
Apparently not. Then again, you seem like the type of person who doesn't need one. You already seem to have gotten over Holt and Aili.
Tessa stood up and the people parted as she approached the bench parallel to the receptionist's desk. Prior to that, she had been sitting on the floor by the entrance. Shiva's words rang in her ears and Tessa felt fresh pain at her losses.
Sorry.
Just shut the fuck up, like I've been asking.
The person who had complained of being sick was lying on the bench. Tessa remembered that it was the place where she and Adette had first met. They fought right away, as Phelan watched on. She almost wept anew for him.
"Where does it hurt?" Tessa asked as she knelt beside the guy. He was tall, incredibly muscled, and tanned almost as heavily as Hunter. Standing to the side and looking worried was the grey-haired woman, Fujin, and the security guard/former leader of Galbadia, Seifer.
"H-here," the guy said as he raised his arm. It was a bite, and Tessa narrowed her eyes as he spoke again. "Can you do anything for me?"
"Yes, just close your eyes," Tessa said quietly. She couldn't believe she had been with a bite victim for so long and not knowing about it. Everyone could've been killed. Looking at his friends, Tessa let words fall from her lips that she wanted to hold back. "Was he bitten by one of those things?"
They nodded, unknowingly sealing their friend's demise. Tessa ran a head over his forehead, feeling the heat as he shuddered beneath her touch.
"So, what're you going to do?" Seifer asked. "What're you going to do to Raijin?"
"SAVE?" Fujin asked.
"Yes, I'm going to save him," Tessa said sadly. Nobody knew what she meant, though. "I need a gunblade for this, and I see two."
Seifer handed his over, asking what it was for. He didn't get an answer. The room was paralysed as Tessa raised the gunblade over her head. Raijin's chest stopped moving and she knew that he was dead, even if the others didn't. There was only one thing to do. She swung downward, toward his skull. The blade was inches from his forehead when a searing pain in her side caused Tessa to scream in pain and drop the gunblade. It hit Raijin's face with one of the flat sides, doing little more than breaking the dead man's nose.
"You can't kill him!" Selphie cried as she ran over and stood between the fallen warrior and the fallen medic. She had hit Tessa with a Blizzara spell, and the redhead was sure that she had frostbite as she clutched her side in agony. "That's murder! What kind of person are you?"
Tessa couldn't say anything, her teeth gritted against the pain.
"Antessence, are you crazy?" Quistis cried, kneeling beside her student. "What were you trying to do?"
"Raijin?" Seifer said as his friend sat up. Tessa saw the red eyes but couldn't say anything. They were rising faster in Balamb than in Galbadia City.
The dead man said nothing as he stood. Selphie threw her arms around him, blubbering about how she had saved him from some psychopath. Raijin had his arms around her and buried his face in her neck. Within a second, she was screaming and trying to pull away. Raijin was the first to do so, however. He had a long string of muscle and neck skin between his teeth. Blood shot out of Selphie and hit Raijin and the wall.
"Selphie!" Irvine screamed. The sound of a shotgun blast filled the small room. Raijin's head exploded, the only part of him not hidden behind the bubbly Brunette. Selphie fell backward onto Tessa, blood spilling out of her wound and onto the younger girl.
Squall calmly walked over to Selphie and looked down at her. Quistis tried to use a Curaga spell on the bite, but it had absolutely no effect.
"There's no cure for a bite!" Tessa finally cried out. "Kill her. Do it now."
"No!" Irvine cried out, looking at Quistis rather than his dying love. "She can't..."
"Destroy the brain or she'll come back," screamed the medic as her body grew used to the pain of Selphie's spell. "Do it now!"
Squall lifted his gunblade. Tessa looked up at him and saw the Commander mouth something to his comrade before thrusting the gunblade through her skull.
"Hyne, what's going on?" Tessa heard Quistis whisper before the Instructor pressed her hand against Tessa's frozen side. At first the pain increased with the added pressure, but soon it diminished to a mere numbness.
"I think it's time for you to give me your report," Squall told Tessa with no emotion in his voice. "I want you in the Headmaster's office within five minutes."
He skulked away, gore-covered gunblade held at his side. Tessa looked around to see that Quistis now had her face buried in Irvine's chest, while Seifer and Fujin looked completely dumbfounded.
"Excuse me," the woman with the shawl said as she tapped Tessa on the shoulder.
"Who are you and what do you want?" Tessa grimaced as she pushed Selphie's body off of her and onto the floor. "This isn't the best time to chat, you know."
Indeed it wasn't. A quiet had settled over the lobby, broken only by Quistis's sobs and the exchange of words between the other two women. Even Hunter seemed to have realized that it was a sombre occasion, because he wasn't trying to steal everyone's attention.
"Everyone knows me as the Card Queen," the woman announced as she waved her arms wildly. "And you're wearing my fiance's engagement ring."
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A/N: Yes, I did it! I fooled my audience and made a surprising plot twist. Woo! So, to recap: Selphie and Raijin are dead; Adette's engaged, not to Fujin (hah hah, got you all!), but the Card Queen (last minute change on my part); and Tessa is about to give her mission report to Squall. Let me tell you, if you thought that there were surprises in this chapter, the next one will blow this one out of the water. (At least, I hope so.)