injury starters | @kingofcards

Sometimes, his ego gets the better of him.

Okay, most of the time, his ego gets the better of him, and today's no different, because someone up in the big offices had decided that everyone, no exceptions, needed to learn how to ride chocobos.

"An error in our curriculum," was how it had been described, a missing piece to accompany learning how to drive (and how to steal a car), how to ride a motorcycle (and how to steal one), how to fly smaller, single-engine aircraft (and how to steal them), and, specifically for Balamb Garden, how to pilot any number of boats and watercraft (and, of course, how to steal them.) Seifer's never liked chocobos. They're big, they're fluffy, and they shit everywhere. It also doesn't help that he'd also been chased by a furious mother chocobo at one point in his childhood, where he'd spent three hours up in a tree until Cid had been able to wrangle the damn bird away.

But they're still just big damn birds, and supposedly broken and all that. He'd been the first to volunteer to get on its back, mostly so she'd report that he'd attended, that he'd passed, and that he could go back to doing literally anything else that did not involve these overgrown chickens.

Literally anything else. He'd rather be getting a root canal. Or fighting a T-Rexaur with his bare hands.

So, like he knew what the hell he was doing, he'd hopped up on the bird's saddled back, and then two seconds had found himself here:

Flat on his back, staring up at the sky, pretty sure that he's broken something. Not sure what yet, but certainly something.

And Quistis is, despite her claims to the contrary, definitely laughing at him. Or at least, desperately trying not to.

He eschews her help up, scowling at the bird running circles around them as he stands, dusting off dirt from the seat of his pants.

Twenty-four hours after he's been snatched off a battlefield, someone shoves a video camera in his battered, bleeding face.

"Say hi," someone says, and he spits a mouthful of blood at the lens instead of saying anything at all.

He's trained for this. He'd sat in a hundred hours of classes, being taught all the ways that someone can hurt a person, that a person can be hurt.

(He feels a little bad about the electroshock thing, though, now that his heart can't quite catch up-- but he'll never tell Squall that.)

"Almasy, Seifer. Garden ID 12220388. And y'all can eat my entire ass." He knows where this is going. He knows it's going to Cid, to Garden, to people who might pretend to want him back, but who won't pay a goddamned dime.

They'd have better luck sending this straight to Quistis, or even Leonhart.

He's not valuable, not as anything more than Garden's pet monster.

Someone hits him over the head with something very hard.

answering old memes! | @kingofcards

"Okay."

She's not sure where to go, covered in Rex blood, her own blood, dead cadets' blood, so Xu just stands there in the middle of Quistis' dorm bathroom, trying not to drip all over everything.

"I need to borrow clothes, I think."

Obviously. It's not like she can go back to work, or even back to her apartment, wearing what she's got on now. She never wants to wear any of this again.

plague-ridden meme | @kingofcards

Quistis doesn't have to tell her twice; Xu is already beelining for her best friend's bed less than a minute after walking through the door. She doesn't really care if Almasy is in it, either; she'll throw him through a window if necessary.

Her face hits the pillow.

There's probably a clever retort that she could make to Quistis' comment, but she doesn't have the energy for it right now, so it comes out more of a mrrmph against the pillow in question.

"I hate children," she adds, rolling onto her side long enough to grab Quistis' hand, pressing a very cool palm to her own feverish forehead. "Why can't we just like... disinfect them before they come into the damn building?"

@kingofcards

Quistis doesn't have to thank her. Quistis never has to thank her.

Xu wraps her arms around her best friend's shoulders, a hug voluntarily given without thought, without hesitation. Xu, who doesn't touch anyone that easily (save for all of two people on the planet)-- this is instinctive, though.

It's not maternal instinct, not anything like that, not something that someone might blame on her current condition (which she's still coming to terms with, several months in.)

It's a hug born of years of friendship, of something beyond friendship. She'd die for Quistis. She'd do anything for Quistis, because that's what you do when you've been best friends since forever, when you've been through everything they have.

just punch this asshole it's fine | @kingofcards

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that she's probably more deadly than he is. Sometimes, he just gets distracted by how she looks in workout clothes.

And (he'd say unfortunately, but he'd had a great view down the front of her shirt a second ago), this was the latter time.

Seifer doesn't even see her punch coming, not fast enough to evade it, anyway.

He stumbles, heel catching on the edge of one of the mats, sending him on his ass without trying, and lays there for a second, trying to figure out what happened.

i need you close at all times | @kingofcards

"I'm not planning on that any time soon," he assures her, but there's something shaky in his voice, because he had, for at least a second, been dead. Or damn close to it, blood pooling on the ground beneath him.

But where a bullet works fast, Quistis Trepe works faster, slamming some of her blue magic into him before anyone else can even think.

Now, he's fine. Now, there's no bullet, no wound, just the front of his black t-shirt soaked in his own blood, and skin whole and hale beneath it.

But there's no time to dwell, no time to think-- he scrambles to his feet, grabbing up Hyperion and her hand in nearly the same motion.

anon (or not!) hour! (always accepting) | @kingofcards

There's a long, drawn-out silence, a slow exhalation of breath, because she's looking at him like that, and Seifer doesn't know how to not be honest with her, despite every bone in his body screaming for him to lie.

"It didn't used to." He shrugs. "It doesn't all the time now, but... it's like some of it isn't mine, anymore. Like she's left hers inside me, like she's tainted mine."

Fire is supposed to scorch and sear and destroy, and now, sometimes, it feels like poison shuddering through his veins.