nightseer

Chapter Seven:




Living in this place is a bigger culture shock than the one I got when I went to Diagon Alley for the first time. This world appears muggle on the surface, but a few days here proves it’s not. They think everything’s muggle and completely non-magical. I think magic is woven into every aspect of their lives and they don’t know it because they’ve never had a true muggle world to compare it to.

Without being charmed (It’s not; I checked), Squall’s gunblade wouldn’t work back home—It shouldn’t work here! When he has nothing junctioned to his elemental attack, there’s a sound like a bullet firing and the blade does this jiggle thing that should break his wrists but doesn’t. When he has elemental magic junctioned, there’s the jiggle and an explosion from the gun portion of his gunblade of whatever element he’s using—Water-a splash; fire-big flames; ice-a shower of ice crystals; etc, etc. Amazingly, none of this hits him; it’s all focused on whatever or whoever he’s fighting. According to the laws of physics (what little I know of them) that’s just not possible.

But it is here. I want to say magic’s woven into everything and melded with science to create a bastard child (magience?) so now every aspect of their lives is magical and muggle and just strange. I tried explaining this to Squall, but he didn’t understand. I think he would have to see my world to know how limited magic and science are there, to experience how limited those with and without magic are, before he could understand why things here throw me so much. (Humans should not be able to be hit with an explosion of magical fire and walk free of it with hardly a scratch or singed hair! I don’t give a flip what they have junctioned!)

Yes, this does have everything to do with why I wanted to scream like Pansy Parkinson seeing Draco as a ferret throughout the jailbreak. I don’t care what Xu says, those things were not birds. They are unnatural and don’t belong here.

The scary part is I don’t know if it’s my magic saying that or if it’s me. It’s gotten rather vocal about things it likes and doesn’t like as of late. Sometimes I’m not sure if my reactions are mine or not. It started in the prison because I opened my big mouth and volunteered myself…

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“They’re setting up a trap,” Rinoa said flatly, voicing everyone’s thoughts.

There was a moment of silence where the group mourned the loss of what had felt like a perfect escape. Then Selphie turned the computer back on, bouncing once in a decisive way that had Harry wondering if she was related to Zell.

The others took that as their cue to start planning. Rinoa and Irvine tried to recall every detail they could from the prison’s blueprints and ran through some very basic plans, some quickly dismissed, others put aside for more thought. Zell groaned as he crouched down to punch the floor, before taking a deep breath and joining Rinoa, asking if it was possible to sneak out the way Irvine and Squall had come in. Quistis murmured ideas under her breath at Squall, eventually abandoning the silent teen to join the discussion happening by what Harry was starting to think of as Selphie’s computer.

Their voices became background noise as Harry, curious and a bit bewildered by the reactions his and Rinoa’s comments had produced, watched Squall and his herd of Moombas. Instead of babbling out ideas like the others, Squall was bent over a computer in the other workstation, typing slower than Selphie with a small frown marring his face as he studied what was on the screen.

Squall suddenly straightened and fixed his gaze on Harry. He raised one eyebrow in a silent question. Harry shook his head; Squall couldn’t be thinking…

Squall shifted his stance and tilted his head a little to the right, his lips forming a barely there smirk and eyebrow still raised, making his expression more of a silent challenge than a question. Harry closed his eyes, counting backwards from fifty. He wanted a chance to prove he wasn’t useless, and Squall was giving him a similar look to the one McGonagall used when she wanted him to push his magic to its limits. Squall wanted something from him. Something big. Something that might prove he wasn’t a complete waste of space.

Harry opened his eyes and walked to where Squall was standing. He tried to imagine every possible ambush situation he could. They all involved the bridge in some fashion, the two most likely depending on how their group crossed the bridge, and he didn’t know enough about this world to come up with all the possible scenarios.

Shifting his grip on Carbuncle so he was cradling the animal in his arms instead of resting him on the bag and balancing him with one arm, Harry stopped next to Squall and murmured, “It depends on what you want me to do. I can’t apparate to someplace I’ve never been or seen, the same with portkeys.”

“And those are?” Squall asked in an equally quiet voice, watching the others.

“Magical forms of transportation. Apparition is teleporting from one place to another, usually only good for one, maybe two people at a time, and portkeys are objects with a similar spell cast on them capable of carrying large groups of people. Both have some serious risks, and those risks are quadrupled when the caster doesn’t know the exact location they’re going to,” Harry explained. “If Selphie can get images from the cameras, I might be able to create portkeys for everyone. Although I don’t know how accurate they’ll be since I don’t have my wand,” he finished sullenly. Merlin, he hated being helpless, and without his wand, he felt as useless and helpless as a Grindylow out of water.

“Maybe as a back up,” Squall said, dismissing both ideas with a small shake of his head. He turned back to the computer and pressed a few keys, bringing up a basic schematic of the prison. When Squall tapped the screen, Harry noticed something about the prison’s design he hadn’t when Squall and Irvine were studying the blueprints: three long shafts represented by pale blue shading below the towers.

He shifted his hold on Carbuncle again, freeing one hand, and traced the image on the screen. If he was reading it correctly, and Harry wasn’t all that sure he was, sometime since they entered the prison the towers had doubled in height, doubling the basement shafts below as well.

“Wha…” Harry turned his frown on Squall. “I don’t understand. What is this?”

“It’s a submerging system. The buildings are typically kept at the halfway point,” Squall said, tapping midway up one of the towers, “like they were when we entered. They’ve been raised to their greatest height.”

Harry studied the image. He used his free hand to trace one of the hollows, his mind racing through the new possible situations this created. They didn’t just have to worry about the soldiers collapsing the bridge, but lowering the towers while they did it. If the fall didn’t kill them, they had a chance of getting sucked down into the empty shafts and crushed as the towers screwed back into the ground. “The buildings’ design almost makes sense now. Why didn’t I see this on the blue prints? Why didn’t we feel it?”

Squall shrugged in response to Harry’s questions and said, “The bridges automatically collapse when it’s activated.”

Harry sighed softly. He had a fairly good idea what Squall wanted, but he didn’t know if he could do it. If he has his wand, it wouldn’t have taken much to freeze the bridge in place if it started to collapse as they were crossing it. If one tower was lowered while the others stayed in place, he could also freeze then stretch the bridge so it would stay connected. If Carbuncle agreed to help him focus, it might still be possible, but Harry was missing something about this. Something vital Ron would typically think of, then tell Hermione so she could ask any and every question about it to get the particulars they needed to form a plan.

Harry sighed again. This was the kind of thing that made the three of them such a good team. He was the powerhouse, Ron was the strategist, and Hermione was their library. They knew each other inside and out, how to balance each other’s faults, how to adapt when one of them was injured…

‘Not now,’ Harry thought, gently pushing his panic and fears to the back of his mind. He would pay for it later in the form of nightmares, but nightmares were better than dying because he couldn’t focus.

“You want me to keep the bridge in place when it collapses. By stretching it, freezing it, something along those lines,” Harry guessed, looking up at Squall.

Squall nodded. “Can you?”

“I don’t know. Is there anything you aren’t telling me?” Harry asked, staring at Squall with narrowed eyes. He huffed when Squall said nothing, as good as a yes in Harry’s book. “What aren’t you telling me?” he demanded.

“There’s a small chance the bridge is made of the same metal as the gates from the sewers,” Squall said. “However, it’s more likely only parts of the bridge contain it. The material is too expensive and sorceresses are too uncommon for the entire bridge to be made of it.”

He paused, a small frown on his face as he looked at something over Harry’s shoulder. “What, Quistis?”

Harry silently strung together a list of curses Ron would have been proud of as he turned around.

Quistis’s expression was blank and professional, only slipping when she looked at Harry. He met her small sneering glare with one of his own. He didn’t know what her problem was with him, but it was going to come back to bite him in the arse if he didn’t figure it out so he could confront her about it or figure out how to avoid it.

Harry stifled a gag when she looked at Squall and smiled slightly. ‘Oh Merlin, not another one,’ he thought, wrinkling his nose. Carbuncle let out a short series of chirps and a sneeze, his version of a laugh. Missing the looks Quistis and Squall exchanged, Harry looked down at the GF in surprise. It could still hear his thoughts while summoned?

“Selphie’s found something you might want to see,” Quistis said, stepping back and motioning to the other workstation.

Squall immediately left, the Moombas not far behind. Harry made to follow, but Quistis laid a hand on his arm, snagging his shirtsleeves with her nails. She jerked her hand back seconds later when Carbuncle snapped at her fingers and hissed at her.

“You could have asked me to stay,” Harry snapped, stepping back so she couldn’t grab him again.

Quistis pursed her lips, her expression saying she didn’t appreciate a complete stranger and an animal critiquing her manners. “What did you do to Squall?”

Harry frowned again, confused by the question. “Huh?”

“It’s not like him to help people,” Quistis clarified, tucking hair that had fallen free of its twist behind her ears. “So what did you do to him?”

“Oh,” Harry said softly in understanding. Then his brain processed her question. “What! I didn’t do anything! What makes you think I did?” he demanded a little louder than he had intended.

“Quistis! Harry!”

Quistis and Harry both jumped at Squall’s voice, and the unspoken order to save it for later in it. After shooting Harry a dark look that said she was far from done, Quistis stiffly walked over to the computer to stand next to Squall.

Harry slowly followed, shrugging when Squall looked at him and raised his eyebrows. He honestly didn’t know what Quistis’s problem with him was, though he suspected it was a lot like Rinoa’s problem with him—he simply couldn’t decide if it was a terrorist/mercenary thing or a crush-on-Squall thing. One thing he did know was he was sick of being thought of as the bad guy when he hadn’t done anything other than exist to earn the title.

“...robots lined up. Even if we make it across the bridge, we’re gonna have some problems. We need to figure out what to do before we leave,” Selphie was saying as Harry arrived. She was pointing at an image on the computer screen of a room that was almost an exact replica of the one they were in.

Harry fixed his gaze on the blue thing on the screen she had tapped with her finger. It took him a few precious moments to recognize the newly familiar shapes as the blue robots from the lower floors. He blamed the camera angle.

“The longer we wait, the more time they have,” Irvine countered. “A couple of Thundagas and Quezacotl could...”

Harry blocked out the rest of the conversation. Not only did he not understand half of what they were saying, Irvine’s words sparked a memory of something to do with Dudley’s computer. Lightning...angry shouting from Dudley’s room...Petunia yelling at him until Dudley admitted to tossing the monitor out the window...

“I might be able to help,” he said softly, thinking out loud and not meaning to be heard.

When everyone in the room turned to stare at him, Harry wished he could melt through the floor.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

We can plan till the chocobos come home, but at the end of the battle everyone’s flying by the seat of their panties anyway.

I believe that phrase ends with pants, not panties.

Eh, whatever.

Irvine couldn’t say why, out of all the conversations between Laguna and Kiros during his impromptu narcolepsy fit in the desert, that one stuck with him. Whether it was because of carefree, goofy Laguna saying ‘Whatever’ exactly like Squall, his polar opposite, struck him as funny or because it was a sign Squall had more influence during those dreams than the rest of them, Irvine didn’t know.

For whatever reason that conversation was staying with him, it fit their current situation to a T.

All of the plans they had devised in the desert were gone, the tentative ideas he, Rinoa, and Zell had come up with had immediately been shot down by Quistis, Squall had shot down Quistis’s plans, and they were now depending on a sorcerer on an Elixir high to get them out of this in one piece, all on Squall’s orders. Not that the rest of them had any good ideas for crossing a collapsible bridge, but the kid was stoned off half an Elixir! Irvine had a damn good reason to be concerned about Squall’s plan. That Irvine had volunteered (no, he had not given in to the all powerful glare from Squall, nor had he fallen victim to Selphie’s pouting, begging puppy-dog eyes) to be the one to stay and guard said sorcerer and run across the bridge with him, risking life, limb, and any chance he had of Selphie remembering him if Harry’s Elixir high ended, his exhaustion caught up with him again, and he passed out halfway across had nothing to do with Irvine’s concerns. Nope, nothing at all.

Crouching behind the thin, painted red metal wall to prevent soldiers from failing to their deaths, Irvine came to the conclusion he was quite possibly the biggest idiot he had ever known.

Ignoring Quistis’s demands to know what Squall was thinking for trusting an unknown like Harry coming from the stairway behind him, Irvine forced his body to relax. He could do this, he would survive it, he would take Selphie out on the date he had been planning since he had seen her walk through Galbadia Garden’s front gates, and he would survive that without being slapped once.

With his confident smiling mask back in place, he looked at Harry. Harry was in a similar position on the other side of the bridge entrance, one hand on the metal floor, his other arm wrapped around Carbuncle, his eyes closed as he concentrated. If he hadn’t been silently whispering to himself, he would’ve looked like he was asleep. It wasn’t inspiring Irvine’s confidence in Harry’s abilities in the slightest, causing his mask to slip.

“Can you do this?” he whispered under the cover of Quistis and Squall’s hissed argument. He wondered if he should tell them he could hear every word, and decided against it seconds later—hearing Squall get chewed out like a first year cadet caught with his hand in the grenades was doing remarkable things for Irvine’s nerves.

Harry opened his eyes and hesitantly nodded. Irvine didn’t try to stop his full body shiver when he saw Harry’s green eyes and Carbuncle’s gem were shimmering with power.

The metal beneath them changed. It wasn’t quite glowing and it wasn’t sparkling, but there was something different about it. The hair on Irvine’s arms stood up as that shimmering something spread, slowly at first, little tendrils reaching back towards the stairs, thick vine-like ropes creeping towards the bridge. Irvine thought, rather absently, it was a good idea when Harry directed the magic to go through the metal walls and under the bridge because the shimmer traveling from Harry’s eyes, down his body and into the metal, had to be visible on camera.

Within seconds, the ropes had thinned to tendrils, stretched to their maximum. There was a flash of light and a gasp from the stairway behind them. At the same time, there were several shouts from the east tower and a panicky screamed order to attack.

A distant—oh Hyne, it was not distant enough—purring whirr reached Irvine’s ears. He risked a peek around the wall. He cursed when he saw the six GIM52A units slowly gliding their way, accompanied by five Galbadian soldiers.

“You done?” Irvine demanded, lifting up from his crouch. He patted his belt pouch to double check it was open and in easy reach, and double checked his elemental junctions and para magic. Thundaras were still on his elemental attack and his small collection of Thundagas was free...moved the Sleep spells he had left to the bottom, brought his Silences to the top, right under his Thundagas...nudged the Brothers in apology, he wouldn’t be able to summon them during this battle...

From the corner of his eye, Irvine saw Harry shake his head once as he looked around the corner. “Wait,” Harry said in a tone that sounded a little too much like Squall in command mode. “Just a little closer,” he whispered, his eyes focused on the robots halfway across the bridge.

“Irvine.” Damn, both of them were using it now.

“Just a second!” Irvine called back to Squall, unable to take his eyes off the lead robot. The thing was only twelve feet away, and getting closer every flippin’ second...

“Any time now, kid!”

The bridge exploded with shimmering light. The robot closest to them disappeared. Then two soldiers behind it, and another three robots behind them.

‘And half the damn bridge went with them.’

It took Irvine’s brain a few precious seconds to understand they hadn’t disappeared, they had fallen. Fallen through empty space where the bridge hadn’t shimmered. Looking through one of the gaps, Irvine saw a growing red speck on the ground being surrounded by several smaller blue specks. He immediately looked away when he identified the red as blood, not the soldier’s suit—a dead enemy wasn’t a threat—while storing the information that there looked to be six or seven low level grunts on the ground.

Even as the remaining steel panels that made up the bridge’s walkway stretched to fill in the gaps (startling another soldier into tripping and falling between the growing panels, his scream cut off by a thud-crunch as his body bounced off one of the bridge’s supports), Irvine stood. Rapidly firing a series of shots into the closest robot, he screamed, “Zell, get your ass up here now! Kid, what the fuck were you thinkin’?”

“Didn’t have a choice. Had to wait until they were on the parts I couldn’t touch; would’ve been pointless to pull the screws free before,” Harry babbled, flinching as Zell skidded to a stop inches from him, hands already in position to summon Quezacotl.

As Zell faded away into the void, Irvine moved as far back as he could without sacrificing his ability to get a clear shot at the leftovers or get in the way of the others as they ran past.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The Ulirmic Theory of Magical Voice, in its simplest form, stated magic was a sentient creature that chose who it partnered with. It was the only theory covered in Professor Flitwick’s class that gave a somewhat believable reason why there were Squibs with the magical gene who couldn’t so much as cast an Accio and muggleborns without the magical gene who became some of the most powerful wizards and witches ever known. Magic decided who was and wasn’t worthy, and the gene only made it more likely a person would be chosen, it did not guarantee it.

After learning about the theory and exposed to the mountains of research Hermione had discovered backing it, Harry and Ron hadn’t been the least bit surprised to discover the Malfoys, Blacks, Parkinsons, Notts, and Bulstrodes had spent a significant amount of money to prevent the Department of Mysteries from declaring the theory a Law of Magic in Britain.

What had been the most interesting for Harry was the small subsection of the theory stating if a witch or wizard listened hard enough or was in the right meditative state, he or she would be able to hear what magic had to say. Harry and Ron had thought it would be rather wicked to hear what magic had to say; Hermione thought it was disturbing and had ended her research into the theory.

Less than twenty four hours after falling on Squall, Harry was in the firm opinion Hermione was right: Hearing magic’s voice was disturbing. His reasons were quite a bit different than Hermione’s. Hermione found it disturbing to discover what she thought of as another part of her had its own voice. Harry was sick to his stomach; his had just convinced him to kill three people so it wouldn’t need to change hosts.

As he babbled out his excuse for waiting longer than planned, Harry wanted to throw up. But since throwing up meant body fluids and that meant Edea would have a method to control him, Harry forced his breakfast to stay in his stomach. One small part of him felt complimented his magic liked him and wanted him to live. The rest of him really wanted a bucket, toilet, trash can that was safe to hurl in his breakfast, granola bars, and what was left of his dinner from the night before, mind control ritual spells be damned.

The blond and black blur rushing towards him came as a welcome distraction from his magic’s satisfied, blood thirsty mutterings. It took Harry a moment to see past the shimmer coating his vision to recognize the blur as Zell. Zell who was going from opaque to muddy to...clear?

Zell disappeared completely as a large yellowish-green funnel cloud formed in the sky. One thunderclap. A second thunderclap. A third clap of thunder turned into a slowly fading rumble. The funnel ripped apart, releasing a gigantic yellow and green bird-like creature. Wings tucked to its side, it plummeted down to where Zell had been seconds earlier, wings spreading at the last possible second to hover above the walkway. Tilting its head and wings back, it let out a screaming order to the clouds above. The clouds replied with a loud rumbling boom and hundreds of lightning bolts struck the bird. As it absorbed the energy, it looked at the robots it front of it. It opened its beak, screaming out a challenge. Another flap of its wings and the stored lightning flew from its wing tips in short, controlled bursts, striking the robots.

Mouth hanging open in shock and fear, Harry finally reached his limit of ‘What the fuck?’ happenings. He was beyond grateful when his world started to go grey for a second time that day.

Harry came damn close tossing Carbuncle into blue-white lightning of Quezacotl’s attack when the animal bit his wrist to stop him from passing out. Harry and small GF stared each other down. It hissed. Harry called it a little bastard. It hissed again, lifting one of its paws in a threatening manner, and Harry reluctantly gave in, deciding if he was going to stay conscious, he was going to fix his previous mistake.

Muttering empty threats at Carbuncle, Harry slammed his hands back down on the floor. He poured more magic into the spells, twisting the purpose of the spells originally laid down. His magic simply wanted to destroy; he guided it to protect as well, all the while doing his best to ignore the smug animal on his lap and never noticing he wasn’t using it as a focus.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Gunblades and swords were not appropriate weapons for bridge battles.

Oh, it looked daring and cool on a movie screen when two sword fighters went all out on a narrow bridge. It was even cooler if both fighters were wielding drastically different blades, part time acrobats, and the fight took place on a narrow mountain ledge with a hundred foot drop.

As a participant in such a fight, Squall ranked it as the third most embarrassing experience he could remember. He dodged. He ducked. He shuffled. If he was lucky, he got off a spell or a quick, glancing slice in between dodges, ducks and whacks. It didn’t help his human opponents had gun arms and his robot opponents’ circuits were partially fried, causing them to swing and twist around wildly, making them unpredictable and thus absolutely useless as shields, until they either fell over the side or Selphie, Zell, or Squall knocked them over. The only thing he had to be proud of was neither he nor his team had come close to loosing their balance.

It was also, excluding his attempt to assassinate Edea, the most dangerous thing Squall had ever done. He was ten floors up, running across a rickety bridge made ricketier due to several stretching spells to cover the missing panels, and blocking and dodging attacks while trying not to fall over the side, be pushed over, or killed.

Bringing his gunblade up as a shield, Squall jumped back as Zell knocked another robot over the edge. Zell jerked his head in Selphie’s direction. Squall nodded back. Both teens crouched as low as they could. Selphie had just hit her limit break.

Three rapidly cast Thundagas hit the fresh wave of robots in front of them. Four slightly slower cast Thundaras followed Selphie’s limit break, then a series of rapid shotgun blasts.

'Quistis’s para-magic and Irvine’s limit break,' Squall’s mind identified as he shot up, already swinging his gunblade at the closest, sparking robot.

He meant to hit it with the flat of his blade. Just knock it and tip it over the side before moving forward.

He didn’t.

The GIM52A’s electrical system finally died, and the robot completely shut down. Instead of tilting to the left and leaving itself open for a nice solid whack off the bridge, it fell forwards onto Squall’s gunblade. And kept falling.

Squall had two choices and less than two seconds to decide. He could either let go of his gunblade, let it fall over the edge with the robot and pay for a new one at Garden (and again go through the pain of gathering the materials to get it upgraded for a fraction of the normal cost), leaving himself weaponless until he managed to steal a sword. Or he could attempt to kick the thing off, yank his gunblade free and aim to fall back on the bridge.

He chose to save his gunblade.

Shifting a little to the right and bracing himself as well as he could when there was no railing to be found for him to lean on, Squall lifted his foot and kicked, at the same time yanking his gunblade towards him. He pulled his gunblade free, flinching slightly at the loud screech of metal on metal as he fell back, but it was free. Unfortunately, once the robot was completely off, Squall kept falling back.

“Squall!”

“Shit! Quistis!”

Time seemed to slow as he went over the edge. A pale Quistis lifted her whip as she ran down the bridge—he figured to grab his ankle or arm with it, which was beyond stupid since she would fall with him. Rinoa was running to him, leaving her back wide open. His respect for Zell went up a notch when Squall saw him dart forward and continue fighting, never giving the remaining soldiers a chance to take a shot at the others—Squall suspected Zell had cast Haste on himself and then fallen into his limit break, the blond typically wasn’t capable of moving that fast.

Then he was under the bridge, looking up at Quistis and Rinoa’s stunned faces, in the perfect position to see what happened next.

A thick grey chain of shimmering air ripped free of the bridge and shot down to him. It grabbed Squall around the waist, yanked him up, and dropped him none too gently on the walkway outside the east tower, right in the middle of a group of stunned soldiers.

Except for the GIM52A units and Selphie and Zell (who Squall was glad to see kept knocking the damn robots off the bridge), everyone turned to stare at the sorcerer peeking out from behind the metal shielding of the west tower. After checking his gunblade, Squall quickly nodded his thanks. He ignored Harry’s shrug of a reply in favor of killing the man updating the commands sent to the GIM52As.

The man fell to the floor, dropping the remote. The clatter-pling of metal falling on metal knocked everyone out of their shock. One of the soldiers (who were still whimpering at the obvious display of magic) yelled in a panicked voice, “They have a sorceress!” to whoever was still in the tower’s control room.

As Harry’s faint shout of “I’m not a bloody girl!” reached his ears and never mind that most of the Galbadian soldiers were running from Harry of all people, Squall did what he had been dying to do for the past twenty minutes and hadn’t felt it safe to do.

He let loose his limit break.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As the group ran through the empty east tower to the garage, Harry fully acknowledged he was being stupid. Squall hadn’t hurt him or threatened him. Squall had even ripped into Irvine that morning on his behalf, come to his defense the night before, and had saved him from Edea before that.

Knowing all of that didn’t stop Harry from feeling uncomfortable around Squall and straying towards the back of the group with Rinoa and Selphie.

Intellectually, he had known and somewhat accepted Squall was a mercenary. But seeing is different from knowing, and Squall had practically torn those men apart in the span of a few seconds. Irvine said the shock of almost dying had thrown Squall into his limit break (whatever that was) and had only registered the fleeing soldiers as a threat because of the heightened state. Harry didn’t know enough to call bullshit, nor did he feel it was the right time to ask what a limit break was. What he did know was those men had been running and Squall had killed them.

A few meters from the garage, Squall grabbed his arm and dragged him to a stop, letting Selphie and Rinoa pass them. Panting, Harry stared up at Squall, scared out of his wits and not wanting to admit it. He looked around wildly and breathed a small sigh of relief at seeing the others were gathered around the door at the end of the hall—Zell and Irvine doing something with the electronic lock.

Looking back at Squall, Harry was surprised to see Squall’s expression had gone from cold, professional concern to a downright glacier annoyed frown. Harry scowled, having absolutely no idea what he had done to cause such a sudden shift in Squall’s mood.

Then it hit him with all the force of Hermione smacking him with her favorite book, and he felt horribly guilty. He had no experience in psychology, but he did know what it was like to be a teenager who was ordered to kill. And while Squall’s situation was only vaguely similar to his, it was close enough for Harry to realize he was being a right idiot. He needed to pretend what he’d seen didn’t bother him in the slightest, because it shouldn’t as much as it was.

“You scared the shit out of me,” Harry hissed, jerking his arm free of Squall’s grip. “I thought something was wrong.”

Judging by the slight melting of the ice in Squall’s eyes, he’d somewhat succeeded in pretending everything was just fine. Relatively fine.

Squall shrugged, the closest Harry figured he was getting to an apology for his new grey hair. “Can you make it to the train station or do you need another Elixir?”

As he was opening his mouth to say he honestly didn’t know and ask since when were they going on a train ride, there was a triumphant shout from the others, followed by a guilty silence when Squall shot an annoyed, exasperated glare down the hall. Harry turned around to see Irvine and Zell holding the sliding door open as the girls ran through, Selphie yelling out her teams’ car was the evil yellow jeep.

“I’m fine,” Harry said firmly, ignoring Squall’s expression that said he would humor him until he fell flat on his face so he would have blackmail for the next time.

Harry started trotting for the door, smiling from the sheer relief of knowing he wasn’t driving, not because he was fine. He felt wobbly, was far more prone to drifting off in his thoughts than he should be, still hugging his GF turned teddy bear, craving a flat surface the same way he had the night before, and as far from fine as he could be, but he wasn’t about to say that out loud. He had shown off enough weaknesses in front of Squall; he was not adding more to the pile.

Squall walked behind him, letting Harry go inside first. Any other time, Harry would have cared someone thought he needed watching and bristled like an angry porcupine, but he was too tired to care at the moment. And he was utterly fascinated with and confused by the small dog dancing around Rinoa’s feet. He couldn’t think of one time since leaving the cell he had seen it. How could he have missed it the entire damn time?

Harry couldn’t stop staring at Angelo. Not until Rinoa turned to see who was staring and asked him what was wrong.

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” Harry said quickly.

Rinoa shook her head at him, smiling in a bemused way, and picked Angelo up. Harry darted forward and opened the back door of the van, using it as a shield as Rinoa put the creepy, teleporting dog inside, and then climbed in after it. He leaned around the door to look at the dog, and realized he would probably have to ride in the back with it. He stepped away from the door, determined to put that moment off for as long as he could. Teleporting dogs were new for him. It might be really, really quiet and unnoticeable when it wanted to be, but if that was true, it was still a creepy little thing. At least it wasn’t a pillow with fur like some dogs...

And his thoughts were wandering off without permission again.

Harry forced his mind to focus on the here and now, and looked around the garage. He flushed when he saw Irvine and Quistis were already in the jeep, leaning out the nearest door so they could listen to Squall and Selphie’s last minute planning session. Zell, who was leaning out the passenger window of the boxy van, snickered when he saw Harry was back among the living and restlessly tapped out a drum beat on the door.

“Welcome back to planet Earth,” Zell said, laughing as Harry climbed into the back. He twisted around in the seat so he could keep an eye on his teasing target. “I thought I’d have to get out and get ya. No one should miss Squall’s driving. Better than a trip to Galbadian Dreams.”

Rinoa squeaked, making a mad dive for her seatbelt, and then pulled a leash from Merlin only knew where and proceeded to make an impromptu seatbelt for Angelo.

“Galbadian Dreams?” Harry asked nervously.

“The biggest amusement park around. Known for their rides that can make anyone scream for mommy, including Seifer. Best day of my life was seeing that,” Zell added in a mutter, as he turned back around, fastening his own seatbelt and grabbing the panic bar on the door.

Harry didn’t think anyone could top a Gringotts cart ride or Vernon Dursley’s driving, but when Squall climbed in the front, turned to check he and Rinoa were buckled in, and smirked at Harry’s missing seatbelt, Harry decided to take Zell’s word for it and immediately clicked the belt securely around his waist.

As Squall put the key in the ignition and hit the button for the garage door, Zell turned to him and said, “Ya know there are guards out there and Selphie’s gonna play the point game. Wanna see who can get the highest score?”

Squall’s smirk took on a dark edge.

Harry braced his feet on the back of Zell’s seat, doubled over and buried his face in Carbuncle’s fur. No matter what he heard, he was not looking. He didn’t want to know how his magic, quiet though it was at the moment, would react.

He was being a coward, but Harry took solace in the fact he wasn’t whimpering like Angelo was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Thump

“Dude! Windshield wipers, windshield wipers!”

Spluch

Crunch

“Okay, now that? That was gross. I think I saw his spleen.”

Splat

“Liver.”

“Close enough. He doesn’t count anyway. Selphie hit first.”

“Hn.”

Screetch

“S-should the blood be streaked like that? Didn’t you use the squirt thing?”

Rinoa swallowed, the back of her throat burning and itching. She had been perfectly happy pretending the splats and crunches and dings weren’t impacting bodies and bullets, but bugs ands rocks. Right up until Harry’s stuttered question, she had been quite content in her happy place of not being in a car where two insane teenagers were really playing their own twisted version of the pedestrian point game.

Then the twerp had to ruin it by mentioning the blood.

“Decided to watch, huh? How many points for that guy?”

“Actually, I thought the metallic screech meant we were out.”

“Nah, that was Selphie trying to not hit the tank and hitting Squall.”

Thump

“Why does a prison have a tank?!”

“Deling had size issues; who frickin’ cares? Focus on the important! How much for that guy?”

“Squall, don’t-!”

Thumpcrunchbumpsquinch

“I’m gonna be sick.”

“It wasn’t lethal.”

“Until you ran her over it wasn’t.”

“She should have dodged.”

There was crunchcrackscreech of wood breaking and metal bending, and Rinoa whimpered, resisting the temptation to look. The sounds alone were going to give her nightmares. She didn’t want to look early like Harry had and risk having images to go with them.

“Shouldn’t have looked. Didn’t need more fuel for my nightmares,” Harry muttered, echoing Rinoa’s thoughts. There was a stretch of wonderful, blissful silence, then he said, his voice a mix of curious and disgusted with a side of sleepy thrown in, “How is Selphie going to get the blood off the jeep?”

“She’ll stop a few miles from the missile base so they can change and cast Water to get rid of the blood, then Aero to blow sand against the worst dings to make them look older,” Squall said, sounding far too smug in Rinoa’s opinion. “Zell?”

Zell cleared his throat before saying, “As Selphie’s team clearly cheated by opening the sunroof so Irvine could shoot at the targets—and we knocked those guys into the prison—I say we won by seven points. Shit!”

Harry shouted and Rinoa screamed as the van sharply jerked to the left, then right, then left again as Squall maneuvered the van around something—Rinoa didn’t want to know what—at a very high speed, and Rinoa flung her arms out to hold Angelo in place so she wouldn’t go flying through a window.

Squall slammed on the brakes, bringing the jeep to a screeching halt, and Rinoa screamed as she jerked forward, her eyes opening out of reflex. Her eyes stayed open as she fell back against the seat, unable to look away from the practically clear windshield. Rinoa’s jaw dropped; she wasn’t sure if she should scream at the three boys for making everything sound so much worse or scream just because it was finally over.

There was a faint dusty pink tint to the glass, but not nearly enough to justify the spleen/liver bit from Zell and Squall and definitely not enough for Harry to stutter like he had. Rinoa looked at the side windows, catching only a few small spots of blood here and there among the cracks where the bullets had hit the bullet proof glass, but still nothing too horrible. Nothing to explain what she had heard. She let out an angry huff, not believing they had done that to her.

Rinoa snarled at Zell when he twisted around in his seat to look at her. He grinned, albeit somewhat apologetically, at her and shrugged.

“Sorry, Rin, but you two were acting like a couple of first year cadets during their first training mission. Couldn’t help myself.”

Squall said nothing as he and Zell got out, completely ignoring her demanding stare, so Rinoa turned on Harry and Carbuncle. As he undid his seatbelt and unlocked the door, Harry hunched his shoulders and muttered defensively, “There was a lot more blood when I opened my eyes, and Squall did run over that soldier.”

“And the nightmare fodder?” Rinoa demanded, as she untangled Angelo’s temporary leash-belt.

Harry bit his bottom lip as he opened the door and slid out. He shot her a mischievous look, said, “Squall’s driving is that bad. He almost hit the prison twice,” and ran after Squall and Zell.

Half wishing she had volunteered to go with Selphie to the missile base, Rinoa allowed herself one short, quiet, frustrated scream, and then she and Angelo climbed out and followed the boys to the train.