Chapter 43
When the Time Comes
(Squall)
Whiteness.
He opens his eyes and can see nothing around him except a uniform shade of empty, limitless white.
He is lying on his back. But soon he realizes that there is no such thing as up or down in this hollow place. Concepts like gravity have no meaning here. He could be lying on his back, or he could be standing up, or he could be balanced on his head. It's all the same here. There is no color in this world, no sound, no orientation. Nothing.
He adjusts his perspective on the world and now, without moving, he is standing up. He feels—or imagines that he can feel—a slight pressure on the bottoms of his boots, as if he's standing on solid ground. But there is nothing beneath his feet. Nothing but the empty whiteness all around.
(Am I…)
(… Dead?)
If so, then the afterlife is a great disappointment. An eternity of colorless nothing? Seems like a waste.
While he was alive, Squall never spent much time considering life after death, but he had always, in the back of his mind, pictured that there would be actual things in the afterlife. Places, events, people. Not just endless void in all directions. If this truly was the afterlife, then what was the point? Why allow his consciousness to linger indefinitely in a vacuum? And furthermore, could a life spent in perpetual solitude really be considered a life at all?
(Wait…)
(I recognize this.)
Time Compression. The name given to the infinite blank canvas following the defeat of Ultimecia and the rapid, uncontrolled decompression of time that ensued. He and the others had been forced to traverse this wasteland after they had stopped Ultimecia's final plan. Without her magic squeezing down on the past, present, and future—smashing it all into a singularity—time was once more free to expand and this had been one of the shapes it had assumed in the aftermath.
(But…)
(Why am I here?)
He'd already endured this trial once before. He'd walked through the unending nothingness and emerged—thanks to Rinoa's guidance—back in his proper time. Why was he being subjected to it again?
He presses his hand to his forehead and thinks. He feels a thin, supple layer of leather separating his fingers from his head. He pulls his hands away and glances at them, as if they were foreign objects.
(Gloves.)
(Yes.)
(My gloves.)
His leather gloves, that touch the ends of the sleeves of his leather jacket. His favorite jacket. The one with the white fur lining the collar.
His concentration wavers, and suddenly his hands are bare. Now he wears the stiff blue synthetic material of his cadet uniform. He glances at himself in shock, looking at the ornate trim, the symbols sewn into the pockets, the neatly ironed creases in his pants.
Another flash and he wears his SeeD uniform, black with gold trim. Different versions of his self—young, mature, SeeD, Cadet, Commander—cycle rapidly as he loses control over his own identity. The white void seems to be drawing away his thoughts, his memories, his existence. Taking away, making him empty as well.
(No.)
(Focus.)
He shuts his eyes and concentrates, balling his hands up into fists until he can once more feel leather in his grasp. He opens his eyes and is relieved to find himself once more in his civilian clothes.
(Relieved?)
(Why?)
It's not as if Squall is ashamed of his military uniform. In fact, wearing it fills him with a sense of purpose, of accomplishment. Of belonging. But for some reason, a part of his mind insists that wearing his civilian clothes is right. It's proper. It's true.
These thoughts make no sense to him. Why should one uniform be any more correct than the others? They are all his clothes, they are all part of his identity. They're all—in their own separate ways—true to Squall's nature.
(Think.)
(Remember.)
Why is he here? How has he gotten here?
He remembers Esthar and Odine's Laboratory. Has the doctor been meddling around with time and sorceresses again? Has something unexpected happened? He searches his memories, but nothing comes to mind.
(No. Not Esthar then.)
But are his memories of Esthar too far in the past or too close to the present? All his memories are a tangled mess in his mind and trying to sort them chronologically is nearly impossible. Images flash across his eyes.
He and Rinoa standing in a field of flowers. He and Quistis in the Garden's secret area behind the training center. The ornate float in Ultimecia's parade in Deling City. The moon, raining down monsters upon the planet. The sun, breaking over the horizon in Balamb. Squall as a child, wearing dirty sneakers and hand-me-down jeans. Squall alone. Squall in a crowd. Rinoa dancing. Seifer laughing. Magic. Gunblades.
"STOP!" he yells, clutching both sides of his head.
He squeezes his eyes shut, substituting the empty white void outside for the empty black void behind his eyelids. For a moment, the world stops spinning and the images stop running through his mind. He takes a few breaths and begins to wonder what it is he's breathing. Is it air? He remembers the chemical composition of air, the ratios of nitrogen and oxygen and trace particles. Where are these elements coming from?
(It can't be air…)
He stops breathing to test what will happen. He holds his breath for thirty seconds. Then a minute. Then two minutes. Two minutes become four minutes, and he snaps his eyes open.
(I don't need to breathe.)
(Maybe I am dead after all…)
The thought has no emotional impact on him. Death is only frightening to the living. If he has truly crossed the divide from one world to the next, then he has nothing left to fear. He thinks he is supposed to be saddened by this thought, but no such emotion arises. He can't remember why he should be sad, or happy, or relieved, or remorseful or anything. His memories are still a lost swirl of color, divorced from any emotional context.
(If this is death…)
(… Then I would rather be alive.)
Once, long before, he had wished to live in a world without people, without conflicts, without doubts or concerns. Maybe one or two years previously, this endless nothingness would have seemed like paradise to him.
But now it is just meaningless waste. He cannot enjoy his solitude because there are no people for him to avoid. He cannot spend time with his thoughts, because his memories are confused. He cannot find joy because his emotions have been sealed away.
There is nothing but the void and himself.
He slowly closes his eyes, but his mind remains alert. An unknown and unknowable amount of time passes with him suspended in the white void, his eyes shut, his arms and legs hanging loosely, suspended on nothing. He is not happy, but he is content, in a way. He experiences neither joy nor sorrow, loss nor gain, hope nor regret. All of time, all of thought, all of everything has been joined together into one single, eternal blank space. Parts of him fade away, but he is unable to notice, because he forgets these lost things the moment they are gone.
(… Rinoa.)
For the first time since first opening his eyes in this void, he does not feel alone. There is someone else with him, someone reaching out for him, searching for him. He can feel her presence, her strength, her emotions. Her existence momentarily fills the void with something other than himself. Her voice calls to him, or so he thinks.
He opens his eyes. A single, clear thread emerges in his mind, linking together the chaotic jumble of his memories and placing them in neat order. He remembers his first encounter with Rinoa, on the ballroom floor in Garden, immediately after he'd passed his SeeD Field Exam. Not only does he remember this image, but he can recall exactly when it happened. He can fix that moment in time and judge his distance from that moment.
He straightens up and stands—or rather, he stands as much as is possible in a world without perspective or direction.
(Yes.)
(The dance.)
Next time he and Rinoa would meet would be in the back of the Forest Owls train. Rinoa had rushed up to embrace him then, joyful at seeing that SeeD had come in response to her call. And from then on, he and Rinoa would be almost inseparable. Even if he tried, he would find it difficult to remember a handful of moments where they two had been apart for any meaningful amount of time.
Images of his past cross in front of his eyes again, but this time all his memories are of Rinoa, and they are all in sequential order. One following the next following the next until…
(The Ragnarok!)
(The gunshot!)
(RINOA!)
Panicked, he starts to run aimlessly. His boots clatter off a floor that doesn't exist as he heads towards a distant horizon that he can never reach. His lungs do not draw air, his skin does not perspire, and his body does not fatigue no matter how long he runs.
After a while, his panic and his fear subside and he slows to a jog, then a walk, then he stops completely. Obviously, the solution to his problem will not solve itself through blind action, but rather through careful consideration.
(Good. I've always preferred to use my mind.)
Now that his memories are beginning to return, he's able to apply logic to the situation. He knows that he has been shot several times and that he has fallen unconscious. He glances down at his shirt and discovers that his clothes now reflect his new understanding. His shirt is stained through with red and punctured with three bullet holes—two in the chest and one in the shoulder.
(So I am dead then.)
He has been shot several times. He knows that Rinoa doesn't have the power to bring back the dead—no one has that power. So, logically, this empty void is truly the afterlife. He glances around, then closes his eyes and shakes his head.
(No. I don't believe it.)
Why would death so closely mirror the appearance of time compression? Were the two concepts linked somehow? Or was this empty void merely a projection of his own mind? Did his subconscious view time compression as a form of death, and then replicate the appearance of time compression now that he has died?
He shakes his head again. Something in his heart tells him that he is still alive, and that his emotions are merely waiting for his logic to realize this truth. The answer to the problem must exist; he needs only to find it.
Then he notices a tiny green orb floating some distance away. He narrows his eyes, trying to see it better, but the object reveals none of its secrets. Forgetting for a moment that he is in a world without space or time, he proceeds to walk towards the orb and is surprised to find that it draws closer towards him with every step.
As he approaches the orb, he is able to see it in more detail. It's a small, translucent sphere of green, streaked with yellow. Tiny flashes of lightning crackle soundlessly from inside. The whole thing is about the size of Squall's fist and hovers at about waist-height from the imaginary floor.
Squall reaches out and holds his hand underneath the orb, intending to pick it up. But as he lifts, the orb passes seamlessly through his fingers like vapor, but still retains its shape. Then it begins to drift away from him, as if pushed along by invisible currents.
Curious, Squall follows.
The orb travels a few hundred paces in a meandering, playful line before it arrives at another orb of the same size and shape. The two orbs hover side by side, exchanging arcing bolts of lightning between each other for a few moments before fusing together into one sphere approximately twice the mass of the original.
(Interesting…)
The enlarged orb hovers in place. Squall reaches out to touch it, but as he does, the orb flits away from his grasp and heads off in a new direction, moving slightly faster than before. Squall again follows it and arrives at a third orb. The larger orb swallows the smaller, becoming bigger once again. He touches the sphere and sets it into motion.
He repeats this process several more times before the orb begins to change form. Soon it is no longer a sphere, but a vague bird-shape with long, graceful wings and a tail that fans out elegantly beneath it. Squall recognizes it and begins to realize what is happening.
(Quezacotl.)
He had used his Guardian Force in the battle against Ultimecia, to defend himself from her magic, and in the process, Quezacotl had been blasted apart by her fury. Now it seems he is rebuilding the GF. He does not understand how, precisely, this is happening or the mechanisms driving this process, but he finds it all to be endlessly fascinating to observe.
He touches the green-yellow energy again, which is now almost the size of Squall himself, and chases after it as it cruises along the void, seeking more of its kind.
After collecting a few more orbs, the bird-shape of Quezacotl stops in place. It spreads its wings to full length and stretches its neck and fans out its lightning feathers. Arcs of blue light shoot from its core and fly off in all directions, creating a deafening thunderclap in the white void. Squall crouches reflexively as several bolts shoot over his head, traveling deep into the empty wasteland.
The lightning bolts return to the GF, dragging along more green orbs and pulling them into Quezacotl's body. The birdlike Guardian Force swells and swells with each new addition, until it becomes the full, massive size that Squall is accustomed to seeing during his summons. The lightning ceases, and the completed form of Quezacotl hovers before him, its beak bent down towards Squall as if in greeting.
(Hello, old friend.)
Squall salutes the GF.
"I don't suppose you know a way out of here?" Squall asks.
The GF is silent, offering no words or gestures to indicate that it has understood him.
(It was worth a shot, I guess…)
Squall reaches forward to touch the Guardian Force. Whenever he attempted this before, the tiny orbs of energy had always retreated, but this time, the GF remains stationary and allows Squall to press his hand into the entity's body. His hand plunges to the wrist into Quezacotl's form, and Squall feels a pleasant buzzing sensation in his skin.
Then the GF begins to warp and deform as it is drawn into Squall's arm. Like some thick liquid being sucked up a straw, the GF compresses and bends as it rejoins with Squall, growing smaller and smaller until it is completely absorbed into him.
Squall blinks, suddenly enlivened. His magic, his junctions, his power all return to him at once. He clenches one hand and feels a rush of confidence and surety. His memories, he realizes, are also beginning to sort themselves out—and not just the ones concerning Rinoa. Now he can remember everything about himself. He is, at last, himself again.
(Now to find a way out of here.)
He grimaces, remembering the last time he had found himself in the confines of time compression. Although Laguna had spun a pretty story about the value of remembering friends and bonds shortly before the last fight against Adel, Squall himself had never figured out a way to escape time compression. He alone among all his friends had gotten trapped in the world between worlds, and had required Rinoa to come pull him out.
(I can't do this alone.)
He remembers—or thinks he can remember—the feel of Rinoa's presence in the void with him. The sound of her voice, which had woken him up and saved him from being swallowed by the emptiness.
(She's here.)
"Rinoa!" Squall yells into the void. "Rinoa! I'm here!"
He waits a few moments, but nothing happens. He tries again, but once more only the crushing vacancy of time compression responds.
(She's not here...)
That is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's good because that means that she is probably still alive in the real world. Perhaps she has managed to escape from Seifer and Ultimeica, or at least keep herself alive. But it's also bad because Squall is now left entirely to his own devices to try to deduce a way out of this.
(And I failed last time I tried.)
He thinks back to the circumstances of when he'd been in time compression before, looking for clues to solve the riddle. According to Dr. Odine's plan, they were supposed to allow Ultimecia to possess Rinoa and then send Rinoa as far back in time as possible, to allow Ultimecia to complete the compression spell. They had done so, and the spell had been completed.
From there, group of six had then used the compressed time to move forward to Ultimecia's era. Since there was no past, present, or future, this was actually a fairly simple matter. All they had to do was keep together and ride the wave of collapsing time until it brought them to the future.
(But why did that work?)
Why hadn't time compression dumped them off in the past? Or spit them back out in the present? Or what if it had instead brought them too far into the future, to a point where they could no longer intercede and defeat Ultimecia? What then?
And for that matter, why did it spit them out at all? Why weren't they trapped in time compression forever from the moment they entered?
Squall shakes his head, amazed that he had never bothered to contemplate this before. He has always been burdened with other thoughts. Fears about the future of SeeD. His duties as Commander. His deepening relationship with Rinoa. He has never actually set aside any time to figure out why Odine's crazy scheme succeeded.
(Well… now I have all the time in the world to figure it out.)
In truth, a part of him is enjoying this. It's a complicated puzzle that he must solve in order to gain his freedom. He relishes the challenge, the high stakes.
He begins the same way he begins all puzzles: by taking the facts that he knows for sure and then using them to make predictions that must logically follow from those facts.
(So what do I know?)
Ultimecia had tried to compress time, but had failed. A small portion of time was allowed to exist untouched, and that piece was in the future, in Ultimecia's present. By traveling to that island of uncompressed time, Squall and his friends had managed to use Ultimecia's own powers against her and defeat her.
Squall tries to make an assumption from this fact, but finds it difficult to come up with anything substantial. Instead, he finds his mind assaulted with questions. Why didn't Ultimecia's portion of time ever compress? Why had Squall and his friends been able to find her? And moreover, how come no one else in the world—even Laguna and Ellone, who were standing right there behind Squall and his friends—reported noticing anything unusual? They had not traveled in time, and nor had anyone else Squall knew of.
Squall remembers having read about that day in the news. Immediately following the event, there had been no mass panic. No one had mysteriously vanished from time. Nobody reported losing days or weeks. Nothing unusual had happened. In fact, the entire world had carried on, not even noticing that time had temporarily been compressed into a singularity.
That thought is staggering to Squall. The world was on the brink of collapse, all of reality nearly destroyed, and no one even noticed.
(Why?)
He ignores the world for the moment and focuses on the smaller problem: why hadn't Laguna and Ellone been sucked into the future with Squall and the others?
(Maybe they didn't focus hard enough?)
No, that doesn't make sense. Squall and his friends had to focus in order to control their passage through time compression and arrive at the proper place in the future. If the whole issue came down to a matter of focus, then Laguna and Ellone should have still been sucked in anyway and just deposited at a random point in time. But nothing of the sort happened.
(What's different?)
He recalls the green orbs floating around in time compression and the answer hits him.
(Guardian Forces.)
At the time, Rinoa still junctioned. She was both a sorceress and a SeeD at that time, and no one saw any reason for her to give up her GFs. It was only days later, after the battles were over, that Rinoa decided that she would rather preserve her memories than risk forgetting things through the use of junctioning.
The six of them junctioned, while Laguna and Ellone did not. That would explain why Squall and his friends experienced the effects of time compression while the rest of the world remained oblivious. But then that raised another question. Why didn't all the SeeDs in the world report having been sucked into time compression?
Squall mulls it over for a few seconds, and the only answer he can come up with is that time must function differently inside the Lunatic Pandora. After all, Piet had said that he had difficulty calibrating his tools while inside the crystal pillar. Furthermore, the Pandora has a unique relationship with the moon and could act as a trigger to release a Lunar Cry. Perhaps some currently unknown properties of the Lunatic Pandora also allowed it to join together two points in time as well as in space. Hadn't Piet suggested something like that?
Squall frowns. He's tying together a lot of assumptions at this point and getting further and further away from proven facts. He doesn't like that. If he assumes too much, he's likely to stumble upon a nonsensical answer, which will only slow him down further.
He backpedals, trying to go back to the original facts, when he spies movement in the white void.
At first he thinks that his shouts for help must have been heard. That Rinoa has managed to find a way into time compression and once more is going to pull him out. But then he notices that the woman approaching him his wearing a thick robe made with red and gold materials. She approaches slowly, lurching, as if every step is painful. Her sightless eyes seem drawn to his, and her pallid gray skin sags with weariness.
(She's another sorceress from time compression.)
He begins to pull away, but then he remembers what Matron had said to him inside the cafeteria after the first sorceress had appeared.
(She's not a monster.)
(And she can't hurt me.)
Squall stands his ground as the sorceress draws closer. Finally she comes within a few steps of him and stops. He can hear her ragged breathing escaping in wet, painful gasps. Her eyelids droop, her mouth is downturned. Trickles of blood ooze from the corner of her lip and down from the inside of her ear. But she makes no move to advance further, instead standing still as if waiting for something. She is not intimidating. She is pathetic, and Squall feels a twinge of sympathy towards her.
"Can you talk?" Squall asks.
She doesn't answer.
"Can you understand me?" Squall asks. "Nod if you can hear me."
She makes no move.
(Damn.)
It would have been nice if she could talk to him. Maybe her understanding of time compression was greater than his and she could offer a solution to his problem.
"You're still here…" Squall says. He doesn't expect a response, but speaking to her aloud helps focus his thoughts. "Why? All the others like you are popping up in our time. Why did you stay in the time compressed world?"
To his knowledge, three sorceresses from the future have arrived in his time. One came to the Garden cafeteria. One had gone to Esthar, where it was collected by Dr. Odine. And one had gone to Timber, where it had passed her powers onto Ciel. He was reminded of a question he had thought of earlier but never fully answered: "Why now?"
Why did all the sorceresses appear in his lifetime, instead of the infinite other times and places they could appear? And why was it only after he and the others had defeated Ultimecia?
(Does Ultimecia have something to do with it?)
He frowns, unsure of that idea. But then another thought comes to mind. At first it seems silly, but then as he debates the matter further, he realizes that there is some truth in his thinking.
(What do I mean when I say "still here?")
After all, this is time compression. All of time is now one moment. Asking the sorceresses, "why are you still here?" is a nonsensical question, because it implies that there was a "before" and an "after." But in time compression, such concepts are meaningless. This is all one big moment, one endless second.
"But wait…" Squall says to himself. "That must be true of our world too."
They had allowed Ultimecia to partially compress time. That was the only way they could travel from the present moment into the future. And since they had allowed time compression to transpire, that meant that—for one eternal moment—all of time was smashed into one instant. Past, present, future. All had been joined as one.
He feels as if he is standing on the edge of an enormous cliff. The implications of that idea are staggering. All of time has been compressed into one moment. Which, in a way, means that time is still compressed. That it would be compressed in the future. And that it had always been compressed in the past. It makes Squall's eyes grow wide just considering the thought.
(We are all living in the time compressed world!)
And with that revelation, the world of whiteness evaporates, exploding into pieces of every conceivable time, place, and reality the world has ever and will ever know. He sees the Centra civilization at its peak, the gothic architecture and the seamless mixture of ancient and modern designs. He sees Esthar, with its cold, calculating modifications of the Centra technology that inspired it. He sees mountains grow and collapse, whole forests blossom into being and then wither and die. He sees the span of a thousand thousand human lifetimes pass before him in an instant.
He had heard once before that the color white was the union of all other colors in the spectrum. And he thinks maybe time compression appears white because it is the fusion of all possible moments and all possible places. However, now that his perception of time has been fundamentally altered, it is as if he has placed a prism in the time compressed world, and is now able to see the many-colored bands of light and time and place that exist within that infinite whiteness.
His mind reels and he grows faint. It's too much for him to handle. Too much for anyone to handle.
(I'm going to throw up.)
He shuts his eyes, but there is sound accompanying the visions as well. Birds hatching, chirping, squawking, dying. People being born, growing, living, loving, fighting, dying. Cities being built, cars racing down streets, machinery humming, bombs exploding. Waves crashing into the shore, earthquakes, storms, volcanos.
(I'm going to go insane.)
He covers his ears, but that does nothing to dull the noise. The images and the sounds and the sensations are in his head, in his flesh, in every pore of his body. He feels as if he is being torn apart and smashed down at the same time. Everything in him screams with a light, floating pain as if his very molecules are being ripped to pieces.
The sorceress saves him. She reaches out with one dead, but oddly sympathetic hand and places it on his shoulder. The gesture is very human, and it startles Squall.
He uncovers his ears and opens his eyes. The images and sounds have stopped cycling randomly. They are no longer in the white emptiness, but instead in a dull brown desert beneath a clear blue sky. He looks at the sorceress. Her expression is unchanged, but her hand lingers on his shoulder. Is she offering him comfort? Sympathizing with his pain? He doesn't know. Her dead eyes reveal nothing.
He takes a more detailed assessment of his surroundings. There is a long, brown mountain range to the south of him. A few massive boulders are gathered in clusters nearby, each stone two or three times Squall's height. The ground below him is coarse and rocky. In the distance, he hears the rumbling of many heavy feet and the creaking of old wooden wheels.
Keeping a grip on Squall's shoulder, the sorceress reaches out with her other hand and pushes through the sky. The air around her arm shimmers, as if the sorceress has plunged her hand into a pool of water. There is a pale, glowing line at her wrist, marking the division between one world and the next. Between the world of time compression and the world of the desert.
Squall squints, trying to figure out what's going on.
The sorceress continues to push, and the division line travels up her arm, past her elbow and to her shoulder. She leans to the side and passes through the veil. She releases Squall's shoulder, her fingertips being the last thing to travel through the divide, and she stands beside him. She is fundamentally unchanged, but there is a different quality to her now. As if she has become brighter, clearer. More real.
Squall turns to face the source of the approaching footsteps and sees a caravan of old wooden carts drawn by ragged chocobos. Squall doesn't personally remember this scene, but he remembers Rinoa's descriptions of the wandering tribe of people. The ones who traveled with Adel. The ones Adel eventually destroyed.
(The remnants of the Centra.)
The caravan moves past them without stopping. A large pile of boulders obscures Squall and the sorceress from the view of the travelers.
The sorceress steps forward, emerging from behind the rock outcropping and moves without hesitation directly into the path of one of the carts. The chocobo screams in surprise and kicks its feet in the air. The cart tips and falls on its side, spilling its supplies and its two passengers—a middle-aged man and a lanky teenage girl with fiery red hair.
Squall, unlike Rinoa and Ellone, never saw Adel as a child, but he instantly recognizes that unique flame-red color in the girl's hair. He has never before seen it on anyone else.
(It's her.)
The girl and the man lay on the rough ground for a few moments, grunting and moaning. Nearby, the chocobo thrashes in mad panic, trying to free itself from the cart and get away from the sorceress from time compression.
(Wait… it can see her?)
That should be impossible. Or maybe not. Squall isn't sure. No one around seems to be aware of Squall, only the sorceress.
The sorceress is not concerned with the chocobo. Instead, she moves towards Adel with a sense of purpose, and Squall realizes what is about to happen next. A few pieces of the puzzle—unexplained mysteries he'd always pondered but never answered—suddenly resolve themselves.
He rushes forward, unthinking, and tries to stand between Adel and the sorceress, but the sorceress passes through him as if he were nothing more than mist. She reaches down to Adel and the teenage girl has just enough time to look up and scream in surprise.
(This is how it happened…)
(This is how Adel became a sorceress.)
And the sorceress completes the connection. She touches Adel's bare shoulder and then sighs with relief as her powers transfer over to the girl. Adel's eyes roll into the back of her head, and she collapses, limp. The sorceress from time compression—the sorceress from a distant future, who had no business being in this place and time—dissolves in a puff of heatless flame and is gone.
Others from the tribe rush to the scene. A few men and women crowd around Adel and the other passenger of the cart, muttering and asking questions. Adel is dazed, her eyes rolling in all directions. Finally, she shakes free of her tribemates and stands up, taking a step back from the others and clutching her arms to her chest, as if she's afraid of people touching her. Her eyes have a crazed, animalistic look to them. A look of unrestrained terror.
An old woman in an ornate robe of purple approaches Adel. The others step aside to make way for the old woman and Adel.
"You have been visited by a sorceress," the woman says. "The time of the rebirth is finally at hand."
"That…" Adel says. She wipes dust off her mouth with the back of her hand. "That was a sorceress? That's what they look like?"
"Indeed, child," the old woman says. "Fate has chosen you to lead us."
Adel looks stunned and horrified. "That… that THING was a sorceress? Did any of you see her? Why was her skin so pale? Why did she look… dead?"
Instead of answering, the old woman turns her back on Adel and addresses the other members of the tribe. She begins leading them in some sort of elaborate prayer, muttering in a language that Squall cannot understand. The other members of the tribe bow their heads and sway along with her words, as if listening to rapturous music.
"That was a sorceress?" Adel asks again, her voice rising to hysteria. "That's what you want me to become? That—that thing?"
Adel screams in fury, her hands clenched into two tight fists, and the cart behind her bursts into flames.
Adel's scream of anger and the cries of the tribe as they rush to put out the fire effectively pushes Squall out of the past. Once more he finds himself in the empty whiteness of time compression. He is panting for breath, stunned by all he has seen and experienced. His mind reels with all the implications of what has transpired.
(The sorceress from time compression traveled back and gave her power to Adel.)
Squall's mind spins so fast it makes him dizzy. To keep himself from getting lost in his thoughts, he focuses on two new truths that he has learned.
For one, all of time exists concurrently in this white void. He can travel to just about any moment that has happened or will happen. That means that—theoretically—he can go back to his own time whenever he wants.
For two, he has seen that the sorceress was able to escape the veil of time compression and manifest as a real, living being that could interact with the past. He makes a note of that fact in order to more properly mull it over later, but for now all he needs to know is that it is possible.
He can travel back to his own time, and he can make himself real once again.
"Send me back to the present!" he shouts into the void, focusing his mind as best he can. But nothing happens. The void does not respond. He tries once more, with the same result.
(Think!)
(What did the sorceress do?)
She had touched him. She made a point of reaching out and touching Squall's shoulder. There has to be some significance to that fact. Once again, he is reminded of the floating green orbs hovering in the white void, and a possible answer manifests.
(The Guardian Force.)
She needed to use the power of the GF to make it happen. He was beginning to think there was something about GFs that he had never learned in school. A link between GFs and sorceresses, the Lunatic Pandora and the past and the present. Guardian Forces gave him strength in battle. In return, they erased portions of his memories, the effects of that erasure becoming more profound with longer periods of junctioning. In addition, GFs, when combined with the Lunatic Pandora, allowed Squall and his friends to traverse the time compressed world and find themselves in the future.
And just now, the sorceress had managed to use his GF to travel backwards in time, to enact a series of events that had already occurred years before Squall's birth and generations before the sorceress herself would come into being.
(It all comes back to Guardian Forces.)
(… What are they?)
But that question is irrelevant for the moment. He believes he finally has found a way to escape the void around him, and he seizes his chance.
Instead of focusing on the void as he has tried before, Squall turns his efforts inward and focuses on Quezacotl. He quickly finds the familiar electric energies of the ancient bird GF and he connects with them like he has done so many times before. But instead of using that link to access his magic or draw strength, he tries something new. He imagines the energy within him as a sort of rope that connects him to the present—or at least his personal version of the present.
Once more, Squall sees a chaotic rush of images pass before his eyes, and the accompanying cacophony of every sound in the universe blasting at once. He closes his eyes, but maintains his focus, picturing the present as clearly as he possible can.
A few moments later, the sounds almost all stop, leaving only the noises of a gentle breeze and a distant rumbling, like a storm on the horizon.
When he opens his eyes, he is standing in the Garden infirmary. Dr. Kadowaki shuffles from bed to bed, attending to a half dozen wounded SeeDs, while more and more step into her office, with bleeding head wounds, severe burns, and broken bones. Some lean on one or two allies, while others need to be completely carried into the office.
And there, lying on a bed in the corner of the room, is Squall's comatose body. He has no time to wonder how this is working or why it's possible. He crosses the room and approaches his body. He reaches out to touch his own arm, to rejoin with his body and break through the veil separating himself from the present, but his hand passes through his shoulder like it doesn't exist.
He curses himself for forgetting.
(The GF!)
He shuts his eyes, focuses on his GF, and then tries again, this time linking together his GF with his own body back on the bed.
He reaches out with one hand and touches his shoulder. His arm appears to pass through a transparent wall and then—
Squall's eyes—his real, flesh and blood eyes—snapped open. Driven by his urge to assist the others in the infirmary, he immediately tried to sit upright, but was struck down by a wave of incredible pain. First in his head, right between his eyes, as if he'd been sleeping with his forehead resting on the point of a rail spike. As he winced at the bright light in the infirmary, he became intensely aware of all three of his bullet wounds. Although they were mostly healed, they throbbed violently. He felt like he'd been kicked three times in the chest and once in the head. All of his muscles were sore and aching, like he'd been fighting nonstop for hours.
(I wasn't expecting this.)
"Commander!" a SeeD in the infirmary shouted out when they saw that Squall was awake. That initial cry of surprise created more and more, until the infirmary was full of surprised shouts and excited chatter. With Squall's piercing headache, the sudden increase in volume was agony for him. He rubbed his temples with both hands and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
(Please be quiet.)
Squall had always been too devoted to his schoolwork to ever drink alcohol to excess, but he'd overheard stories from adults and other students about hangovers. What he was experiencing seemed to mimic a lot of tales he had heard.
(If this is what a hangover is like, then I'll never drink a day in my life.)
"Squall? Squall, can you hear me?" a familiar voice asked. Squall opened one eye just a crack—the blaring light in the room was like staring into the sun—and he saw the blurry outline and white doctor's smock of Dr. Kadowaki.
"I can hear you," Squall said softly.
"Squall, do you know where you are?" Dr. Kadowaki asked. She was speaking at a normal volume, but her words hit Squall's ears like a series of punches.
"The infirmary at Garden," Squall said. He covered his eyes with one hand. That seemed to help a little. But he could do nothing to dampen the sounds in the room, which drilled into his ears, making him sick. He was aware of a distant rumbling sound, but a part of his brain still registered it as a thunderstorm.
"What else can you remember?" she asked.
All at once, the memories of his experiences in time compression spread across his mind like a massive tapestry. The images appeared bright at first, but grew dimmer and dimmer with each passing moment, like a dream that was fading upon waking. Squall struggled to focus, making sure that he could still recall the important details he'd learned from time compression: his encounter with the sorceress, how Adel got her powers, and everything else. The worst thing he could do, he thought, would be to forget some important detail.
"Squall? Squall, can you hear me?" Dr. Kadowaki asked. She put her hand on his shoulder. He winced and recoiled.
(Please lower your voice…)
"I'm here," Squall said.
"You weren't answering me," Dr. Kadowaki said. "One second, let me take a look at you."
With his eyes closed and covered, he couldn't see what she was doing, but he heard her rummaging through her emergency kit.
"No, go help them first," Squall said. Without opening his eyes, he gestured out towards where he remembered seeing a cluster of wounded students—before he had escaped time compression. "They need the help more than I do."
Dr. Kadowaki hesitated. "Are you sure you feel alright?"
"Yes," Squall said. To prove it, he removed his hands and opened his eyes in narrow slits. The light was still painful, but it seemed to be getting more manageable.
He could see her blurry outline as she nodded. "Stay here. Don't move. I'll check up on you when I get a chance."
All at once, Squall's strength fled him, and he flopped backwards onto the bed, his head hitting the pillow. It felt like his brain was sloshing back and forth in a vat full of motor oil and rusty nails, but the soft pillow behind his head offered him some comfort. He threw one arm over his eyes and concentrated on recovering his strength.
(Well… I was basically dead for a while.)
(Obviously there would be some consequences afterwards.)
He could hear as more students entered the infirmary one after another, some moaning, some yelling, some not making any sounds at all. He listened as Dr. Kadowaki moved through her office, treating her patients with mechanical precision and speed, wrapping up wounds, splinting breaks, and administering pain medications to those with severe hurts. Outside, through the window, he could hear shouts and screams and low rumbling. He finally realized that the rumbles were explosions, not thunder, and he winced.
Several minutes passed like this. Squall felt like he was getting better, but only in tiny increments. At the rate he was going, it would be hours before he would be ready to leave his bed, let alone get up and fight.
(I can't stay here while everyone else is fighting.)
"Are you okay, Commander?" a female SeeD asked Squall. He gave a halfhearted wave with one hand, not bothering to look at who was addressing him. "Is there anything I can do?" she asked.
"Let him rest," Dr. Kadowaki said.
But the girl made no move to leave his bedside. He could feel her presence beside him, and hear her breathing.
(What does she want?)
He lifted up his arm so he could open up his eyes a tiny crack and peer at the student who had spoken to him. He could not recognize her face. She wore her long black hair tied in a braid along her back. When his eyes fixed on her, she bit her lip, apologized, and made to leave.
"Wait," Squall said. She paused on the threshold of his room and turned to face him.
"Yes, Commander?" she asked.
"What's going on?" he asked, his voice a croak. "Who are we fighting?"
(And why are we fighting?)
"The Galbadians," she said quickly. "Their navy ran into us outside of FH."
He closed his eyes and sighed. Of course it was the Galbadians. He had known that a battle like this was coming, but he had been unable to stop it. He ground his teeth, frustrated by his own inability to stop the fighting, and his current inability to even participate in the battle.
(I should be out there with them.)
(I should be leading the defense.)
He turned to the girl and said, "Help me."
"How?" she asked. "I mean, what do you need?"
"Whatever magic you've got," Squall said. "Or painkillers. Anything. I need to fight."
The girl bit her lip and glanced towards where Dr. Kadowaki was working on another student. "I don't know if I can let you go and fight. Dr. K wants you to stay in bed."
(That doesn't matter.)
"Just do what you can," Squall said.
(I hate being useless.)
The girl continued to chew on her lip, then raised her hands up to chest level. "Alright. I'll see what I can do. No promises, though."
"Try, please."
She reached out her hands until they were hovering just above Squall's chest. She closed her eyes and focused, and soon a green mist appeared from her fingertips and sunk into Squall's chest. He gasped as the cool, soothing relief flooded through his veins and entered his tortured nervous system. The healing energy probed throughout his body, expertly searching for the worst wounds and binding them together, easing aches, and redirecting blood flow. Then, the girl turned her attention to his head and sent pulsing waves of energy through his skull. His jaw unclenched and fell open, his eyes rolled in the back of his head.
(She's talented.)
The magic she was using was low- to mid-level, but she was performing incredible acts of finesse and precision, beyond what was normally taught in school. Even the best-trained instructors would find it hard to keep up with this girl.
After a few moments, she pulled her hands away. The soothing energy dissipated, but Squall didn't mind. He felt reborn, totally energized. He still had some minor aches, but nothing he couldn't power through.
"That's all I can do," she said. "Your wounds have already been healed, but I managed to relax your nerves a bit, so there should be less pain."
Squall nodded in approval and admiration. Performing magic on the nervous system was tricky, but she'd executed it flawlessly.
"Thank you," Squall said.
The girl beamed at his gratitude. "You're welcome, Commander. I'm Minde, by the way."
"I'm Squall," and extended his hand for a shake.
"I hope you're feeling better, Commander," Minde said. She bowed, then stepped away from Squall's bed and rushed to the service of the nearest wounded SeeD.
Squall sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He was glad to see that he was still wearing all his clothes—including his boots. He couldn't imagine what he would do if he had been dressed in an infirmary gown and left barefoot on the bed. He steadied himself for a moment, making sure that he wasn't about to faint or fall over, then hopped off the bed and stood up.
His head spun for a moment and his joints cried out in temporary pain, but he quickly mastered himself and recovered his balance. Before anyone could stop him, he stepped out of the infirmary—passing just behind Dr. Kadowaki, who had her back turned to him—and exited into the hallway. He was confused by the fact that the infirmary door was stuck wide open, but he didn't think much of it.
When Squall had moved halfway down the hall, a SeeD clutching a bleeding arm wound paused and regarded him with wide-eyed wonder.
"Commander!" the SeeD said. "You're awake!"
"Yes," Squall said, marching past the student. He was about to keep going down the hall when another thought struck him. "Hey, where's Rinoa?"
"The sorceress?" the SeeD asked. Then he gulped and his face paled, as if he'd cursed in front of his mother. "I—uh—she's on the balcony, last I heard."
Squall nodded and continued down the hall.
The interior of the school was fairly empty, as—presumably—most of the students had been called out to fight at various points out in the periphery, like the quad and the balcony. As such, only wounded students were left in the middle. They regarded Squall with wonder, and whispered to him and to each other, like he was some kind of ghost, risen from the dead.
"Feeling alright, Commander?" a SeeD asked, saluting him.
"I'm fine," Squall said. He tried his best to walk tall and act unaffected by his extended convalescence, but even with Minde's magic, he still had to battle waves of dizziness and weakness in his limbs. He climbed the stairs, breathing heavily by the time he reached the top, and stabbed the button to call the elevator.
(I'm in no condition to fight.)
But at the same time, he was too healthy to stay in bed. As long as he could stand under his own power and think rationally, he would do everything he could to defend Garden. Maybe he wasn't strong enough to fight on the front lines, but he could still issue orders and direct the students.
The elevator arrived and Squall stumbled inside and pushed the button for the second floor. The sudden lurch as the elevator rose up nearly knocked Squall off his feet. He had to reach out and catch the nearby handrail to avoid taking an embarrassing tumble.
The elevator lurched again when it stopped, but Squall was braced for it this time. The doors parted, and the sounds of battle reached his ears. Muffled shouting, gunfire, and magic came from down the hall. Squall set his jaw and marched determinedly forward. He wished that he could run, but in his current condition, he didn't trust his legs enough to try.
The hallway was empty as he walked along. He glanced inside the classrooms and saw—through the windows in the doors—that each room was filled with monsters. His eyes widened and he stopped walking. His first urge was to warn the students. Monsters had somehow overtaken the second-floor classrooms.
But then he noticed signs, hung on each classroom door, that read, "CAUTION! MONSTERS INSIDE! DO NOT OPEN!"
Squall narrowed his eyes, wondering why the students would deliberately put monsters in the classrooms. He shrugged and continued down the hall. He reached the door at the end and shoved it open—it seemed to feel heavier than he remembered—and stepped out into the warm ocean air.
Outside, there was no question that there was a battle raging. Squall's headache returned as the sounds of gunfire and explosions and screams of pain and rage poured into his ears. The smells of smoke and blood and gunpowder filled the air, making his stomach turn. He clenched his teeth and climbed the steps, prepared for whatever he was about to see.
Out on the balcony, about thirty or more SeeDs stood in carefully planned formations, frantically casting support and healing magics or fending off waves of bullets. Several Galbadian soldiers clung to the side of the school, slowly climbing their way up to the balcony or down from above. SeeDs hurled magic at them, while also using protect spells to shield themselves and their allies from the bullets the G-Soldiers fired.
He saw Selphie, standing precariously on the railing of the balcony, totally unafraid. One of her hands gripped the icy blue wrist of the GF Shiva, and together the two were unleashing a blizzard of awe-inspiring proportions, firing downward at targets that Squall could not see from his angle. She cheered and whooped and challenged the Galbadians to come at her. She easily deflected their bullets—not with protect spells—but with walls of ice that she built up around her, like a frozen cocoon.
Beside her was Irvine, standing at the railing and firing down shot after shot from his gun. He shot three times with blinding speed, then knelt down behind the barrier wall and shoved more ammo into his shotgun, then popped back up and resumed his assault.
Zell stood at the edge of the balcony, grappling with a G-Soldier who had reached the railing. Zell twisted the soldier's wrists, then pushed hard, tossing the soldier overboard and into the ocean. A girl with a staff stood beside Zell, casting a frenzy of magic and knocking the soldiers back and away from the balcony.
In the middle of the crowd was Quistis, shouting orders above the chaotic din, reinforcing weaknesses in the formation and ordering students to take over positions whenever another student got injured. She was so busy, she never noticed Squall standing only a few paces behind her.
Squall looked past Quistis and saw Rinoa on the far side of the balcony, almost totally obscured by Selphie's giant ice cocoon. She wielded some kind of white energy in both her hands. Despite his extensive training, Squall had never seen anything like it. He couldn't see down beyond the balcony, so he had no idea what kind of effect her magic was having, but she seemed to be holding back the worst of the Galbadian assault.
(Rinoa…)
He had seen her fight many times before, but never like this. She seemed like she was possessed, and her strength and her fury outmatched even the combined efforts of all the SeeDs around her. Her hair whipped around as she spun, finding new targets and hurling her magic at them.
"Commander!" a voice said. "What are you doing here?"
At the sound of this voice, the SeeDs on the balcony began to turn their heads, one by one. They noticed Squall and their expressions lit up with renewed hope. They called out in surprise, their voices reaching Squall's ears.
"Squall's awake!"
"The Commander's here!"
"Squall's alive!"
At the sound of Squall's name, Rinoa glanced over her shoulder. Her eyes met Squall's and her mask of fury dropped, becoming something else that Squall couldn't identify. It looked to him like a mixture of shock and terror.
(I've never been any good at reading faces.)
Rinoa threw out one last enraged blast at the Galbadians, then spun around and charged through the crowd of SeeDs, pushing them aside as she ran for Squall. She threw her arms open wide and swallowed Squall in the deepest, tightest embrace of his life.
His aching body cried out at the strength of her hug, but he ignored his slight discomfort. He wrapped one arm around Rinoa and placed the other on the top of her head. She buried her face in his chest—which was still stained red with his blood—and breathed deeply.
"It's okay," Squall said. "I'm alright."
Squall looked up and saw Quistis approaching.
"Squall…" she said. "You're awake…"
"Yeah, I'm fine," Squall said. "What's the situation?"
Quistis grimaced and looked at Rinoa, who still had her head buried in Squall's chest. "Rinoa, we need you on the front."
Squall looked down at Rinoa and whispered. "Go. You have to go."
A missile exploded nearby—a huge one, one meant to sink ships. Selphie managed to absorb the worst of it with her ice magic, but still the balcony shook and everyone staggered for a moment. That attack was enough to remind Rinoa of the peril they were still in.
"THAT THE BEST YA GOT?" Selphie yelled in defiance.
Rinoa pulled her head off Squall's chest, looked up at him, smiled, and slowly released him, before dashing back to the front lines. Squall felt as the warmth of her body gradually faded from his clothes, leaving him cold.
He turned to Quistis. "What's the situation?" he asked again.
Quistis replied quickly. "A half dozen Galbadian cruisers got on our tail and began attacking us. We've managed to whittle that number down to four, but they're still attacking relentlessly. We've got Tomomi leading the forces onboard Trabia Garden, and the rest of us spread out at key points in the school."
Squall narrowed his eyes.
(Trabia Garden?)
Quistis sighed. "There's a lot you need to catch up on, I'm sure. But here's what you need to know. Selphie is a sorceress now, and can do some sort of super-junctioning technique with Guardian Forces now. She's keeping the worst of the Galbadian barrage away from us while Rinoa focuses mainly on the counter-offensive. The rest of us here are basically just supporting them. "
Squall's mouth fell open.
(… How long was I asleep?)
"Wait," Squall said, holding up a hand. "Selphie's a—"
"Yes," Quistis said. "We don't have time for the whole story. Tomomi's a sorceress as well, so we've got three sorceresses fighting on our side. Really, it's the only reason we're all still alive."
(Who's Tomomi?)
"We've been steadily running eastward," Quistis said. "To try to put as much distance between ourselves and the main force of the G-Navy as possible. So far it's worked. We haven't seen any new ships joining the battle."
Squall nodded. Once again, he was impressed by the people around him. Quistis seemed to have the situation under control—or as much under control as a battle of this scale could be. He honestly felt that the battle was best left in her hands. Although he had come to the balcony in order to see Rinoa and lead the defense, he now realized that if he tried to assume command, he'd likely make a crucial error, either because of his wounds or because he didn't know enough about the circumstances in order to respond appropriately.
(I didn't even know that T-Garden was mobile or that Selphie was a sorceress.)
(What else don't I know?)
But there would be time enough for questions later. At the moment, the battle was still raging on.
"Can you fight?" Quistis asked.
Squall shook his head. "I'm still a little shaky, so no. What else can I do?"
"We need healers," Quistis said. "Tomomi's power is great for that, but she's down on T-Garden. And everyone else is starting to run low on curative magic. Can you manage?"
"I got it," Squall said.
Quistis nodded, then spun around and jumped into the crowd of SeeDs. Squall took a step back, positioning himself near the stairs. From that position he could see all the SeeDs on the balcony and respond quickly.
It wasn't long before a Galbadian soldier seemed to fall from the sky—apparently leaping down from some higher place up on Garden—and then land in the middle of the balcony. The soldier swung a sword around in a circle, hitting several SeeDs and knocking them over and opening bright red wounds along their arms and torsos. Quistis wrapped the end of her whip around the soldier's neck with a loud crack and then twisted and threw the soldier. The soldier stumbled, hit the railing, and tipped over the side, vanishing from sight.
Squall rushed forward to attend to the wounded SeeDs. Three of them were down on the ground with obvious, but minor wounds. Two of them were attending to themselves with cure spells, but the third had been sliced deep across the chest, opening his uniform with an ugly gash. He writhed on the floor, his jaw clenched, moaning.
Squall kneeled beside the SeeD.
"Hold still," Squall said. The student tried to comply, but the pain in his chest made him squirm.
Squall wasn't typically a healer, but he had extensive training on the subject, as well as a stocked inventory loaded with some of the most powerful spells in the world. Even though he wasn't as skilled as Minde or Dr. Kadowaki, he knew enough about the subject to not feel any nervousness or tension.
(I got straight A's on all my Practical First Aid and Magical First Aid classes.)
He set to work. He closed his eyes and focused. Green vapor escaped through his gloved fingers and poured into the SeeD's chest. Through the power of the magic, Squall could visualize the injury, the severed veins, the torn muscle tissue. He directed the energy towards the areas of greatest damage and stitched together the torn pieces.
"WOO HOO!" Selphie shouted, breaking Squall's concentration. "Another one down! Take that, Galbadia!"
"Don't celebrate yet!" Quistis yelled. "Keep fighting!"
Squall shook his head and refocused. Normally he wouldn't allow himself to be distracted so easily, but his head was still swimming, making it especially hard to concentrate.
(No excuses.)
(Focus.)
He returned to the wound, dumping his energy into the SeeD's injury. He managed to tie together the severed veins and stop the worst of the bleeding. Then he began closing the wound itself, starting with the muscle tissue at the bottom and working his way up to the skin. It wasn't a perfect job and would leave a prominent scar and probably ache for days, but the SeeD would live.
Squall opened his eyes, releasing the spell.
"How do you feel?" Squall asked.
The SeeD opened his eyes and took a deep breath. He rubbed his chest, scratching at the site of the wound. "It's… good, Commander."
"Back out on the front," Squall said sternly.
"Yes, sir!" the SeeD said, climbing to his feet and returning to his position. Squall stood up and backed away, staying near the front door, away from the worst of the battle, but still close enough to help.
An interminable amount of time passed this way. Squall watched and waited, seeing SeeDs take bullets, get hit by shrapnel from explosions, or get slashed by swords from the occasional G-Soldier who broke through the front lines. Squall rushed out and helped every single one, not losing a single patient while on duty.
Squall was able to steal glances over the edge of the balcony when he was healing students, which gave him some perspective of how the battle was progressing.
The Garden itself was moving steadily east, moving parallel with the Horizon Bridge to the south. Trabia Garden moved around and around the school like a satellite, harassing the Galbadian ships and shoring up weaknesses in Garden's defenses. He saw a girl he presumed to be the sorceress Tomomi standing in the middle of the school and throwing magical spells in every direction, occasionally stopping to quickly heal her comrades before continuing on. The rest of her Garden fought with guns and improvised weapons, grappling with G-Soldiers on the floor of their school.
White SeeD was nearby as well, but it stayed to the fringes of the battle, only occasionally moving in to unload a dozen or so White SeeDs onto a Galbadian ship. The White SeeDs then worked diligently to overpower the ship's operators and steal their weaponry, turning it against the other ships.
"WOO HOO! Only two left!" she shouted as another Galbadian ship slowly sank. The soldiers aboard climbed into rescue boats or dove into the ocean while their ship plunged into the depths. The remaining two vessels relaxed their attacks, their soldiers scrambling below decks. Soon, both ships began to slow down, allowing Garden to pull away from them.
"They're runnin'!" Selphie yelled. "We got 'em!"
A cheer spread over the group and the fighting slowed to a stop as the SeeDs eliminated the last of the Galbadians still clinging to the sides of the school. Squall rushed to the edge of the balcony and peered over the side. As Selphie had said, the remaining two Galbadian ships were backing away from the battle, getting further and further away.
(We won?)
Beside him, Rinoa stared out into the ocean, her face drawn and pale.
"It's not over…" she whispered.
Squall narrowed his eyes, then followed her gaze.
On the horizon—and approaching fast—was the bright red viper of Galbadia Garden.
The school had the exact same engine and technology as Balamb Garden, and under ordinary circumstances should not have been able to gain any ground on its sister school.
But G-Garden had undergone some modifications. Eight Galbadian cruisers were lashed to the front of the Garden in two rows of four. They towed the school through the water like a sled dog team, increasing its speed and allowing it to gain on Garden.
Behind G-Garden was another half dozen ships, moving in formation along with the school. Counting the two ships that were falling back to join the others, that made for sixteen ships, plus G-Garden to contend with.
Squall took a deep breath. His hand found Rinoa's on the railing, and he squeezed her fingers gently.
(It's only just started.)