Disclaimer: I don't own Final Fantasy.

Wahahahah! Good one, Into The Blue! Superoth for the win, yeah! Ooh, and thanks for deh reviews! I've tried to come up with a way to describe how I feel when I read them, but it's impossible, since your reviews are too awesome. (Haha, Inuyasha-Hojo, eh? Think you're onto something there!)

Comprehension

Solomon was in her house.

Paige had no idea why.

But no matter what the reason was, Solomon was on her territory.

Paige was so furious that soon, she might be described as a a rabid, berserk bull-lion-dinosaur-bulldoser-something on a murderous rampage to kill its lifelong arch enemy. Perhaps her eyes were growing red at this moment, or maybe she was growing the fangs of a sabre tooth tiger, or it could be that her muscles were rippling and growing until she looked like one of those Mr. Universe guys. Some things she was sure of, though: her blood was boiling, she was scowling very deeply and very darkly, and she was standing with the dark wooden living room table in front of her like some sort of shield.

Buuut... she was still scared as a coward.

"What are you doing here?!" she demanded in a hiss, scowling still. Solomon immediately walked backwards to the living room door, with his hands in front of him.

"Sorry! When, uh, when I woke up this morning, my dad said you never showed up for karate practice yesterday, so I got worried..."

Paige paled.

...Ka-Karate?

She'd been so busy watching Sephiroth on the news she'd forgotten all about karate. So much for the promises she had made, the ones about never being late, always showing up, no matter what. That said, karate was a business between herself and Solomon's father (her karate teacher), not Solomon himself.

"Oh," she said, her voice flat. "I'll call you father and explain myself, so you can go."
"But are you all r-"

"Yesss," she hissed in a warning tone. Solomon had just walked into her house on his own. He had better not think he could do so without her even talking back.
"But-"

"Enough!" she interrupted. At that point, Solomon made a half-hearted attempt at making his eyes glint dangerously, but he just couldn't do it. In the background, John Smoth shifted on his T-stand.

Enough, indeed. What could she say to keep him away?

"Wait..." she muttered. Solomon's father had once said something about him. What was it? In between praising Solomon as a good son and a good karate student, and even a good man, his father had also mentioned a few times that he had the heart of a child. Apparently his father wanted him to be a little more manly, rather than just gentlemanly. Paige frowned, thinking. Yeah, Solomon was super innocent, and mega-kind, and had ultra-smiles of incomparable brightness. How could she defeat that?

"Guess what, Solomon," she started, an idea building in her mind. "You know Sierra, right? Beautiful, gorgeous school princess?" Slowly, he nodded. He didn't know where she was going with this. But soon he would.

"You still remember when I saved you on our very first school trip, a couple of years back?" Since then, he'd followed her around.

"Yeah, I would've fallen in the river if you weren't there-"

"Then listen to this: You... You've liked me ever since then, right...?" Another nod. It took all her strength to talk about stuff like this. "Well, meanwhile, since before that little event, Sierra has liked you. She's had eyes for nobody else. Seriously, for feelings like that to last this long, I think it's more than a crush. Especially considering she's the school princess and can have pretty much any boy she wants." Please don't counter by saying your feelings too have lasted too long to be a regular crush...

But her words had a surprising effect.

He looked utterly stupefied. As if he'd never even noticed. He looked so shocked Paige had to rethink what she'd just said.

"She-She likes me?" he asked, incredulous.
"Yes," she said, her guts fluttering with hope. Maybe this was the solution to all her Solomon-related troubles? Or was that too easy?

Solomon blushed, then frowned, thinking hard.

"She's liked you for longer than you've liked me," Paige tried, and his blush deepened. Now he seemed really troubled.
"I never realized..."

… Just like a river announcing 'Lol, I had no idea there was water running in me!' or a cow saying 'Wow! I had no idea the milk's coming from me!' or perhaps like hearing a president declare 'Wut? The first lady's in love with me?' or to venture even further, like watching the earth chase after the moon because it hadn't seen the brilliance of the sun just yet.

"Now you know. Next time you see Sierra, look her in the eye and try to read her face or something. She'll blush like crazy. Like you're doing now."

"But I love you," announced the blonde. Paige felt like several veins popped in her head. Anger?

"If you love me," she started, gathering her courage and walking around the table, "you better just love me like a sister! Sis-ter!" Paige walked straight up to the man, who by the way was much taller than her and thus made her feel smaller and angrier and more scared at the same time.

"Now, out!" she declared and turned him around, then started pushing him out.

John Smoth, having been a looker-on all the time, chose that time to speak: "Oh, yeah, baby! Shake it and move it ova' here. Funky!" The bird stepped back and forth on his stand, then deigned the situation worthy enough to half-fly, half-jump all the way over to the kitchen isle. "Funky, groovy. Got ma' eye on ya." It was abnormally satisfying to have him on her side, Paige thought, even if he was a macaw. The parrot squawked on as she shoved Solomon through the entrance door and outside, down the few steps and into the snow. He stumbled, but stayed on his feet.

"Out! And don't return here!" she exclaimed, pointing at him.

"You ma' lady, I'm ya' man," she heard the parrot say from inside. He didn't follow outside, though. It was a miracle if he left the kitchen half of the room he was in, even.

"And next time you even think of me, think of Sierra instead! Next time you see her, get a closer look at her, talk with her, hang out with her, or something. I mean it," she finished, then stood still for a few long seconds while pointing at him for good measure. He looked back, eyes wide with mild wonder. Like a child, his father had told her. Solomon was still way too gentlemanly to end up with Paige. He was made for Sierra. Because of Solomon's excessive kindness (if it could even be called that), Paige would never be able to properly like super-kind guys. Maybe she would end up with some criminal.

A picture of Sephiroth flashed through her mind. Before it could even manifest itself, she mentally slashed and tore at it viciously to avoid blushing. What the-...?! Then she pointed some more at Solomon while nearly growling, and turned on her feet and walked inside.

Sephiroth had flown at breakneck speed all the way back from the White House. That morning, he had talked to the President. It seemed a distant memory already – one that had to do with Shinra. Now he was back in the town he had stayed in for half a year. It seemed the same as always, with hamlets spread across the sloping forests, with mountains on one side and the Columbia River on the other. At the moment the weather was fair, and snow covered everything within his view. Not a plane in sight – nobody had managed to follow him, then.

He landed in front of Paige's house, his boots crunching in the snow. Somewhere along the way he had rid himself of the hood he had used to hide his face – it was most likely on a voyage down the Columbia river right about now. As for the bed sheet in which he'd carried the President, it was still on the roof of the White House. At least Sephiroth still had his Masamune. Just as he was about to turn around and walk inside, he spotted a person walking down the road from Paige's house. The person glanced over his shoulder – just a short glance, not long enough for the man to see Sephiroth. Even at this distance, the man's cheeks were a rather disturbing red.

… Solomon?

What business had he had here?

Watching as Solomon walked out of his sight, Sephiroth felt a rush of disappointment. Paige had almost begged him to save the President, and he had complied, although he had already done her a favor – he had built her a sauna after one of Shinra's fiends destroyed the old building. Yet the first thing he witnessed upon his return was that she was busy with something else entirely – something that had to do with Solomon. Was she under the impression that she could simply use Sephiroth, put him to work? Spin him around her finger like some simpleton or another and make him do whatever she pleased?

Glowering, Sephiroth went inside.

Still wearing his boots and carrying his Masamune, he stepped into the living room.

"Funky!" squawked the parrot, eyeing Sephiroth with one eye. "I'm hot 'cause I'm fy!"

When Paige turned around to see who it was, her face was at first frozen in a deep scowl. The moment she saw it was him, though, and when she saw his scowl, her own faded significantly and she seemed utterly lost for a moment. She wasted almost half a minute doing nothing but glance at him and shift, glance at the television screen, then at his Masamune, trying to decide what to do.

Speaking of time...

...she had been wasting rather a lot of it lately. Her limited life span. Had she not the perception to realize she had no such thing as an abundance of time? She should put it to better use – spend it doing something worthwhile before it was too late.

"Err, welcome back. Thanks a lot for helping out the-the President." She frowned at her stumbling words. "It looked pretty unbelievable. And, uh, very impressive, too."

And she owed him for it.

"So now I owe you something," said Paige, needlessly.

If anything, he wanted her to permanently remove her so-called mask. As it were, however, it seemed to him the mask was already coming apart at the seams. He could easily tell that Paige looked uneasy, and somewhat impatient, but most of all worried. With her mask already like this, perhaps he could come up with something else later, that she could give him.

"Yes, you do indeed," said Sephiroth, and to his wonder he caught her blushing. A very deep frown followed on her part, but it didn't help any, so she pursed her lips and scowled murderously at something behind him. At lack of anything better to do, she put her thumbs in the pockets of her gray jeans. The lower part of the arms of her too-large shirt pooled around her wrists. That was not what kept his attention, though. The more he looked at her mask-lacking face, the darker her red blush turned, until she all but cringed in his presence.

"Sorry for asking all that of you," she mumbled and dared look him in the eye, frowning deeper now than he had ever seen her frown before. Her eyes were icy blue, in rather unusual contrast to her scarlet flush.

He found it rather fascinating.

Perhaps it was too bad that he would only be able to watch her for a few more months.

"Well, have you made up your mind or what?" she demanded rather angrily.

"...No," he replied.

Not yet, in any case.

After school started again, Paige developed a habit of countering everything Solomon said with something, anything, related to Sierra, the school princess. To her joy, it made him blush every time. The few times he tried telling Paige how much he liked her, Paige stopped him abruptly by saying he was only allowed to like her as a sister, or a friend, or even better (and less emotional and less related to personal bonds), an ally. She continued with this until she had brainwashed herself with the thought that it might be possible to brainwash Solomon into actually believing that Sierra was brainwashed enough to truly and honestly love him from the bottom of her heart.

The only problem so far was her leukemia.

Solomon was so pained with the thought of it that, despite Paige's attempts at brainwashing him, he reverted to his old, Paige-loving self every time he thought of it. Apart from Solomon, other things that continued their good old habit of bothering her included homework, Solomon's fangirls, Solomon's fangirls' allies, Sierra's loyal subordinates (if they could be called that, considering the fact that Sierra herself had actually given Paige a break lately), her own worried family (even though their continued phone calls were understandable), and... Sephiroth. It was simply weird how extremely self-conscious she got every time he glared at her.

It couldn't be helped, though. There was an extremely huge gap between them. He was a man, she was a woman. He was a super-human, she was a super-average-human. He had saved the US President, all she had saved was Solomon. And so on.

One day, a Saturday a few weeks into the new year, Paige was mercilessly awakened by heavy, pouring rain in the middle of the night. It sounded like thousands upon thousands of cups of water were falling onto the roof – nothing like a few average-sized drops. Still, Paige did her best to sleep a few more hours. She failed miserably. It was a long time since they'd had rain, and a longer time still since they'd had a waterfall like this coming down on them. So far, snow had covered pretty much everything within a radius of ten miles. That would soon come to an end, it appeared, even if it was only January. Slowly, over the course of many hours, the rain ceased and the sun broke through the clouds. Paige couldn't be bothered – as soon as the downpour ceased to normal, light rain, she fell asleep again and slept like a rock. She had a sweet dream in which she made a snow fortress around her home, with walls higher than the roof of her house, and more snowballs than she had ever seen in her life. These, she threw at all the whack-a-mole-Solomons that popped out of the snow outside her fortress. Pure bliss.

Much later, after noon actually, she got up and shuffled downstairs happily. So happily in fact, that she wondered why.

As soon as she remembered Solomon, and her own leukemia, her mood took a painfully abrupt dive. Looking out the kitchen window made it no better – all that was left of the snow was a few white, wet patches. The rest was a muddy brown color, except the wet, dead grass, which was simply a slightly lighter muddy brown color. At least it had stopped raining. And the sun was peeking through the thick layer of gray clouds. Two good things.

When she turned back to the room, she was surprised to see nothing but the chest of a red t-shirt.

Sephiroth?

She stepped back, effectively letting her mask take over all her face. Sephiroth remained where he was, his face unreadable as he raised a hand. In his palm rested a Rubik's cube. The one with 7x7 squares on each side.

It was unsolved, however.

"Haha," she managed, and almost laughed at the impassive sound. It hadn't been on purpose – she was actually sure she had a good, confident bark of a laugh coming, but apparently not.

Next followed a short flash of a scowl on his part, then a small flurry of colors as he started solving the cube. He was working extremely fast, yet his face seemed indifferent, like he was insulted by her mask. He needn't be for long, though – she was so enthralled she was gawking at the Rubik's cube. She didn't know how much time passed, but before she knew it, the thing was solved, her mask was in pieces, and Sephiroth was smirking in a way that made her blush and turn extremely angry at the same time.

Her day was worsening – again.

"I'm going out for some air," she said, wanting her voice to sound indifferent, but it came out as a growl.

Sephiroth gave a chuckle, and she walked out of his way before she turned angrier and her face redder. Why was it that her face turned so red, anyway? Paige scowled viciously by herself. Perhaps it was because of Solomon, since he'd been so gentlemanly and kind and smiling and caring (which she didn't find very compelling after suffering through it for such a long time). Sephiroth was his extreme opposite. And she'd always had a thing for antagonists. It confused her. That must be the reason.

Once she was outside, standing on the small porch, she breathed in the fresh, cold smell of moist air and earth.

Until she saw something that made her frown very deeply.

Very deeply, indeed.

Something appeared to have happened to the outhouse.

Paige frowned suspiciously at it, her lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, her head askew – as if any of that could make the sight before her any less (or any more) real. The previously dark, wooden brown, slowly rotting outhouse was smaller than before, and lighter, and it was most definitely not leaning as much to one side as it had done before. The roof was no longer covered with huge, moss-covered slates that threatened to fall in your head every time you passed the building. It all looked positively new. For a moment her mind turned into an arcade game machine with three slots. In the first slot, Solomon's face appeared. Her dad's showed up in the second. The third face was Sephiroth's. Surely one of those three had something to do with this? … Solomon wouldn't dare, would he? No, not on her property. It was illegal to do something like that. Sephiroth? Hah. As if he'd do her such a huuuge favor. Her dad, on the other hand, had been talking about fixing the old shack for a long time... To think he'd be this thorough.

Not blinking for a minute, she fished her cellphone from her pocket and dialled her dad's number, then waited. He answered after two rings.

"Hello? Paige? Is-"

"Hey. Did you, or did you not fix the old outhouse in my garden."

Silence for some seconds.

"Paige, I...? What are you talking about? If you want me to fix it, I, well... I know I've been talking about fixing it, right? ... Then, if you want me to, that's the least I can do! We'll starts as soon as possible, how about..." His voice faded as her thoughts rushed. Then, her dad hadn't made this thing? If her mother had made it, she would have told Paige's dad for sure. But Solomon would never build something on her property. Not without permission. That wasn't even legal. Then...

Then, Sephiroth...?

"Uh, no, never mind. Someone's already fixed it, dad. Thanks. I was just wondering if you're the one who did it. I have to hang up now, dad. Call you later, bye," Her voice didn't sound like her own. It was lighter, much lighter. A weird sensation was burning in her stomach. Like somebody was tickling her.

"Sephiroth...?" she said to herself, unbelieving. He had built this? Who else – John Smoth? Yeah, right. Not in a bazillion years-

A rustling of leather and tinkling buckles alerted her to Sephiroth's presence by her side, but she couldn't turn around. Her feet were like lead. At the same time, though, they felt extremely light, whereas her head felt like an anvil. Suddenly she felt very cold. And the freaking tickling sensation still lingered in her stomach. She was dizzy and happy and shocked half to death at the same time, then. Soon she wavered, and let her head drop a little.

"You made that thing?" she demanded.

No reply. Only a shift of leather.

"When?" she tried. Huh. Did that even matter?

"...A fiend paid a visit around New Year. It broke the building," sounded Sephiroth's low voice. For the first time in months, she found the sound magnificently and elfishly smooth and deep and suspiciously velvety. Just because it didn't sound hostile.

Goodness. She was on dangerous ground. No more thinking of elves. Even if Sephiroth could use magic and had silver hair.

"So... In other words... I owe you even more than I thought I did." It was a statement – a true one at that.

But Sephiroth didn't confirm. He stood there for a long moment, then turned and walked inside, leaving her gawking at the magnificently new, slightly smaller outhouse. Her curiosity got the best of her in the end, though, so after putting on shoes, she walked up to have a closer look. Right before she opened the door, she was struck by a rather annoying truth: If the old outhouse had been destroyed, so had her precious, useful, ancient, rusty bike. For as long as it had been snowing, she'd had to get up much earlier to walk to school (for as long as she had breath left in her body, she would not take the stuffed school bus). Now the snow was gone, but she'd have to continue walking to school. Suddenly her day seemed bad again.

Frowning in a depressed manner, she opened the solid wooden door.

"This..."

Some kind of... steam bath? A sauna...? That's what it looked like.
A sauna, built by Sephiroth.

For me, she added as a smug afterthought. Or at least for my garden, for him to use.

And then her day turned good again.

The following week, the rain continued. A number of times Paige tried the sauna. In the beginning she didn't know what to do, how to work the thing, but once she found out how to adjust the warmth, and once she found out where to pour the water, things went better. For some reason she felt a little embarrassed and uneasy every time she used the sauna, as if it wasn't hers, or she shouldn't use it. But... it felt good. Put her mind off things. As more days passed and more rain came pouring down, all the snow was washed away. The rainy period was followed by a few unusually warm days with a clear sky and bright sunlight. Rather than late winter, it felt like late spring.

Of course her school wouldn't pass up on something like that.

It was time for the second of the two compulsory school trips.

This time they weren't going into the woods (or within miles of any deadly river), and thank goodness for that. They were going to the old Kisaragi Compound, a collection of Asia-inspired buildings and pagodas not too far from the school. The Kisaragi family, who owned the place, had made newer houses (still Asian, with a few pagodas) somewhere else, and often rented their old quarters to people who wished for an unusual experience. The old Kisaragi Compound was rumored to be stuffed with secret passages, loose tatami mats hiding secret rooms, paper screens that could be hiding passageways to other rooms or buildings, and so on. To add to that, beautiful ponds with koi (white and red fishes) were scattered about (inside the houses, of course, since it was too cold outside in the winter). Each of the shoji paper screens (on the walls and doors) were painted or written on with Japanese script and art, and all the buildings were circled by wooden walkways. A secluded, completely Asian area. Canada was left behind outside the walls and the gate.

The others in Paige's class were running around squealing like kids, and having fun doing it. She didn't mind, as long as they didn't bother her. The others had been running around for hours, searching for secret places, and the sky was already inky black.

After a while they slowly gathered outside, wrapped in their sleeping bags and in the thickest blankets they could find. They all sat on a wooden walkway with buildings at their backs, with a garden in the middle. In the small, closed-in garden they lit a small fire.

Then, true to tradition, they started telling ghost stories.

"Once upon a time..." said a dark-haired one, his voice deep. One of the more popular guys. "...There was a boy." And the girls squealed already. The small fire cast flickering shadows all over the place.

"He was a perfectly normal boy, like any other you might see walking down the street on a normal day. The only difference was that he had really strict parents. Every day, he arrived at school five minutes early. Every day, he did his homework, even if he was sick. Every day, he came home half an hour after school and ate dinner with his parents, and every day – if he went out – he came home by six o'clock," continued Bray, which was his name. "This continued for years, throughout primary and secondary school, and all the way to high school. The boy sometimes entertained the thought of staying out late, but didn't dare to. His parents were too strict."

The others looked at him, waiting for the tale to get scary.

"But then, one day, he didn't get home in time." Bray glanced around, enjoying himself. "The clock turned seven, then eight... When he finally got home, at eleven o'clock, all the lights were out. There was no sign of his parents anywhere." The others' attention was fixed on Bray.

"Without a sound he walked up the stairs, slowly, step by step... And halfway up, he spotted something red on one of the steps." Silent gasps. Paige tried to pretend she was unimpressed, but Bray had skills with storytelling. "And on the next step, too, and on the next..." Bray's face turned dark as he gave a sinister, evil grin.

"And on the top of the stairs..." he said, his voice barely audible, "lay a blood orange." His face lost all malevolence and turned friendly, expectant. Playful.

It took some time for some of the others to realize what he'd meant, and once they did, all their fear vanished without a trace, and they laughed good-heartedly. More stories followed, some scary, others funny, a few from real life. At some point they even shared opinions about Sephiroth's recent President rescuing. Although Sephiroth was there with them (silent throughout it all), they didn't even have a clue it was him who'd done it. Too low on imagination, perhaps. Paige, listening to praise, found herself getting proud on Sephiroth's behalf.

Why had she agreed to this, again? Hide and seek, blah. She was so tired she was two hundred percent sure she'd fall asleep within one minute. She'd found a secret room to hide in, without holes she could peek out, and practically without light, too. For the last five minutes people had been running back and forth past her hiding place, without even stopping. It was a neat, roomy storage room, full of flat tatami floor pillows. In other words, way too comfy to hide in for long. But despite the comfiness, she was feeling gloomy. Hearing the others laugh so heartily was oddly depressing. It made her a little jealous, even, so she ended up pouting and sulking by herself childishly.

Knowing you didn't have a whole lot of time left could do that to you.

"Death." The word came out sounding really grumpy, like she'd said blah. An annoying thing, death. At a distance she could brush it off and laugh it in the face, but as it came closer it looked worse and worse. Now it seemed close enough for her to touch, and she wasn't laughing any more. Not that she had been before – but she had tried to brush it off. What did she want, though, before she died? Her family had offered to go on vacation with her, to some place she wanted, and one weekend they had visited her and brought tons of expensive, foreign food. What was it, again? Chocolate from Switzerland, Norwegian salmon, Russian caviar, clam scallops and so on, even. What had her dad said? "If you're not going to the countries, some of the countries can be brought to you, right?" His smile wasn't so broad after a few hours, once his stomach started complaining.

Paige snorted, smiling at the memory.

"Something amusing?"

Paige's smile froze.

R.R.

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