Summary: Squall Leonhart has known only one thing all his life—that he was born and raised to be a SeeD. But being an elite mercenary is no easy task. Having grown up sheltered beneath Balamb Garden’s ring, he soon finds himself scrambling to stay alive after his first real mission thrusts him and his teammates onto the political stage in a bad way. Forced to head out into the dangerous, unforgiving wilds or face execution, they find themselves unraveling the ancient mysteries of their world, all while another sorceress war looms on the horizon. Haunted by strange, unexplainable dreams about a man he doesn’t know, and bound to the might of the crystals by abilities he can’t explain, Squall finds himself walking blindly into an uncertain future, even as he’s assured that “fate” guides his every step.
Yet, as circumstances grow murkier, Squall can’t help feeling that everyone else knows more about everything—including himself—than he does, and that he’s nothing more than a pawn in a game he doesn’t know how to play.
A retelling of Final Fantasy VIII from beginning to end.
The days leading up to graduation were busy, but less stressful than they could have been had Squall not facilitated an alliance with Selphie. Despite her chipper, animated personality, she wasn’t nearly as chatty or loud as Squall had anticipated. In fact, she wasn’t those things at all, much to his unexpected relief.
They’d spent quite a bit of time together at a secluded picnic table in the quad, she working on her graduation speeches while Squall had done his best to meet her expectations for the Garden Festival posters. Though she had a propensity for humming or even singing under her breath as she worked, she’d been generally quiet outside of any brainstorming they’d had to do together. In fact, most of their joint time had been spent without conversation, and so Squall had allowed his dread at the idea of spending so much time with her to dissipate. She’d done her thing, he’d done his, and they’d only communicated when necessary.
As a result, he had assisted her in moving her stuff to her new dorm room after their SeeD assignments had been distributed. Squall didn’t own much in the way of possessions, and so his move had been both quick and efficient, but Selphie was quite the collector of magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers, as well as all sorts of computer gadgetry. Given that she was still relatively new to Balamb Garden, she didn’t have too many friends to help, and so had enlisted Squall’s assistance post one of their quad meetings. As he had to stay in her good graces until graduation, he’d agreed.
According to her, most of her “records” were kept for their journalistic value, whereas all the computer junk was the result of two things: One, her practical skill being computer engineering, and, two, that she’d been doing what little she could to investigate Galbadia’s interest in the various communication towers. This latter point was where her one-sided conversation had started, though Squall had, admittedly, been curious to know if she’d made any discoveries. As it’d turned out, she hadn’t.
They’d had the rough drafts of their speeches done by Wednesday night, as expected, and given how crucial it was that no one realize they were doing a bait and switch, it’d been imperative that Squall deliver a draft to Instructor Trepe Thursday morning, one that she would interpret as being his own even if Selphie had a separate rendition. As a result, he’d had to suffer Instructor Trepe’s criticisms and go through the process of making adjustments to his fake speech. She’d even tried to make him read it aloud to her, but that had gone down very poorly and she’d eventually given up.
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