Sorceress and Knight Epilogue

Valete, Liberi

By Tsarmina

Life returned to the tedium of before, or at least that’s how Seifer felt about things. He and his posse had left Fisherman’s Horizon for Dollet—they had a habit of moving to different parts to test new waters. Or, at least, that’s their reason they give to anyone curious enough to ask them. The truth, well, we won’t go into that now—it’s not exactly what one would call vital to this storyline.

Anyway, tedious fishing filled Seifer’s days again. He couldn’t help but wonder exactly why he was fishing all the time… It probably had something to do with Squall, he decided. Bad idea; thoughts of Squall brought memories back. That bastard took my card and never gave it back! He’s probably—

"Give it back, ya know!" Raijin whined, breaking Seifer’s concentration.

Seifer scowled and looked over to determine the problem: Fujin had some comic book hooked onto her fishing pole and was slowly lowering it to the water.

"FISH. MAYBE EAT. EXPERIMENT," Fujin said with a shrug.

"Did we run out of bait again, Fujin?" Seifer sighed.

"AFFIRMATIVE. RAIJIN’S COMICS. USE INSTEAD," Fujin replied.

"But I was almost done with that one! Now I’m never gonna learn if she wins his heart, ya know!" Raijin complained. He seemed to be trying to appeal to Fujin’s good side—a pity she didn’t really have one and, if she did, she would have shot it promptly to put it out of its misery.

"Wait—What kind of comics are those?" Seifer demanded, disgust building.

"GIRL. MISS TEA," Fujin snorted.

"What’s wrong with that, ya know!?" Raijin demanded.

Either the tone Raijin used or what he said set off Fujin, maybe a combination of the two. She kicked Raijin and he went flying, arms flailing, into the water. "PLEANTY," Fujin spat.

Seifer sighed. "Why do we keep doing this even though we’re out of bait?"

"RAIJIN ATE," Fujin growled.

"Ate what?" Seifer asked.

"THE BAIT. ATE IT."

"That’s disgusting!" Seifer exclaimed.

"I was hungry, ya know! And I didn’t pay attention to what I was grabbing!" Raijin protested, dragging himself out of the water.

"Worms. How could you not tell what you were eating?!"

Raijin’s face turned pale. "…worms? I ate worms? I think I’m going to be sick, ya know!"

"SICK ELSEWHERE," Fujin snorted.

Seifer knew it would be a long day. He couldn’t remember a time when his days weren’t long. Except when he was a Knight—now that was fun… Being evil is a lot more interesting than not…

~~~

Laguna sat behind his desk in his office, staring blankly out the window. His expression was bored and he looked like he was about to fall asleep.

The radio was on behind him, a man droning on about all of the current news.

"…an interesting sighting near Delling City yesterday morning. The forest is currently…inhabited…by a pack of, what one man called, ‘demons’. They seem to all wear yellow, big boots, and a rather horrible hair cut. He also reported on some sort of Satanic chant that consisted of ‘super’ often. We have yet to verify these reports, but we do warn travelers that it might be best to keep out of the woods near Delling City until things have cleared up…"

Laguna no longer stared out the window. He had bolted under his desk, calm compusre shattered like a wine glass under an AP Art History textbook. And yet it continued.

"…of Delling City, it seems their president is in a unique position. He’s actually a stone statue. Experts are working on repairing him… If all else fails, though, they say he’ll just make an excellent shrine for himself…"

But Laguna wasn’t listening. He repeatedly banged his head against the inside of his desk, mumbling "her" over and over again.

~~~

Squall yawned, nodding occasionally as Rinoa continued talking about something. He had mastered the art of when to nod and when to shake his head—she never even noticed that he never listened to her anymore. I wonder how Laguna is doing. He seemed a litlte off when we handed him over to Kiros and Ward… Not that I blame him. Selphie is terrifying at times—no, more than that… I swear she’s the Devil. I’ve never met someone as diabolically dense as she is… Well, the dense part would be Zell, really. Now he’s pretty stupid. No way around that one. Huh. New expression… What’s wrong with Rinoa? She’s giving me a look… Oh dear.. Not her!

"Oh, hello there Rinoa and Squall!" Quistis exclaimed cheerfully, entering the Balamb Garden cafeteria.

"…Quistis," Rinoa greeted stiffly. "Oh, hi, Irvine!"

Irvine didn’t pay Rinoa any notice. He was too busy with Quistis. "There must have been an escape from the zoo, ‘cause there’s a vixen loose!"

"Cut it out, I said!" Quistis growled.

"…that one always works, though! Come on, Quisty!" Irvine complained.

"Not a chance," Quistis snapped.

"Aren’t you glad we’re not like them, Squally-Wally?" Rinoa cooed, patting Squall on the cheek.

Squall refrained from letting his instincts take over…he didn’t bite her hand. "…Whatever," he grumbled. He almost wished they were

"Ohhh… I’m so sick!" Zell groaned.

Selphie led Zell in, grinning cheerfully. "My super spell wore off and now Zell’s bummer sick!" she announced.

"Kill me now," Zell whined.

"But I still haven’t gotten my revenge on you for turning into a traitor!" Selphie pouted, lip sticking out. She was back into her normal attire—that which a cult many miles away also sported.

"The twit does so by making him eat hot dogs," Astatine (in Selphie’s body, of course) grumbled.

"What’s bummer wrong with that?" Selphie whined.

"Plenty," Astatine snapped.

Quistis sighed and slouched into a chair alarmingly near Squall. "She’s almost more annoying than before!"

"It could be worse, I guess…" Irvine commented. He sat down close to Rinoa and waggled his eyebrows, whispering something that caused her to slap him.

"Hey… Did we ever destroy Lunatic Pandora?" Quistis asked abruptly.

"…I think we forgot again. GFs, remember?" Rinoa replied.

"No, I don’t," Squall said.

"Umm… What were we talking about, anyway?" Quistis pondered.

"Twits…"

.

Return To FF8 Fanfic