FF8 C R A C K
c h a p t e r
o n e
My name is August Taye. Here’s a picture: black hair, dark brown eyes, slender build, average height, average weight. I’m a student at Balamb Garden, the hero factory, not. There’s been a rise in applicants in recent years, ever since the second Sorceress War eight years ago, and the fact that the six SeeDs who brought on its end came from this academy. Actually these famous people still work here, but they’re not as amazing as you’d think they’d be.
Anyway it’s Monday morning and I’m late. Button my hair, tie my shirt, drink my boots, lace up my coffee. It’s my roommate’s entire fault. Her name is Gretchin and she’s a scatterbrain. Here’s a picture: red hair, a scatter of freckles, two big puppy eyes, long legs tripping over the electric cord…ouch. Nasty.
Last night she set the alarm clock to seven thirty instead of seven. A bit of a comfort that now she’s late too. She’s got Ferald this morning though, the toughest instructor. Gretchin isn’t usually stupid enough to trip over the electric cord. In a flurry of “dammitdammit” she snatches up loose sheets of paper and jams them in her files.
Me, I’ve got Trepe, so I don’t have to worry. If I’m later than usual and she wants an excuse I’ll look her straight in the eye and whisper, “It’s personal, Miss.” That dumb trick even works on
Trepe, whose policy on punctuality is stiffer than her armpit stubble.
Got lots of training to do. I passed my written and now I’ve gotta train, train, train until I’m barely alive to pass my field exam. I heard it gets tougher every year. A guy I know is preparing for his fourth field exam. That hard! After having my head stuck in textbooks for months I feel too unfit to train.
Gretchin has scampered off. She left her file on the table. She’ll come back for it. These double dormitories are so small. We have a sink and huge desk for all our clutter but we have to use the bathroom down the hall. When we become SeeDs (
when, not if), we get our own dormitories and our own bathroom. Pretty neat. And no more Gretchin.
Coffee gone, I chuck my mug into the sink and straighten my uniform. I sweep up my bag and sword and make a dash for the door.
The warning bell for class shrills and I begin to run. I have to make it upstairs in less than a minute and the elevator’s always crowded. Take the stairs.
By the time I reach the second floor, every class is in and I’m the only one in the corridor.
Thorny, my friend, is dawdling outside Trepe’s classroom, chomping on an apple. “Why so late?” he says with a full mouth. “Had trouble tying your ponytail?”
I whack him with my bag and he almost chokes. “Why are you hanging around out here?”
“Trepe’s late.
For once. Everyone’s waiting inside.” He takes one last mighty bite out of his apple before dropkicking the core into a nearby bin. “You’re awfully lucky,” he says, dusting his hands off. “Wrong time of the month to get on Trepe’s bad side.”
“What? How’d you find that out?”
“Trepies,” he says, pushing open the classroom door and walking through. “They know everything about her.”
Thorny’s name is actually Fagan but no one calls him that, because it’s a little too easy to find a derogatory nickname in that. They call him Thorny because of his weapon of choice – poison darts, or as he calls them, firethorns. Actually, he uses any weapon that can be hidden up sleeves or in pockets or can be strapped to the body – knives, and so on. He’s also a professional liar, trained to lie and fake his way through lie detector tests. Only when he’s told to, though. Here’s a picture: Red hair, pale blue eyes, shirt half tucked into his trousers. He also has a gangster way of walking. He has to fix that.
The classroom is in chaos. That’s right, Trepe is late, for
one morning, and the world threatens to spin around the moon instead. A couple up the back have already lit their cigarettes. Vin, computer hacker and bosom buddy since the age of seven, is already seated and studying her reflection in her handheld mirror.
She lifts her eyes to study my dishevelled uniform instead. “I think I got it.”
I dump my bag on the floor, slam my sword onto the desk and sit down. “Huh?”
“Gretchin, in the bedroom, with the dysfunctional braincells.”
“More like Gretchin, in the bedroom, with the dysfunctional alarm clock. Not that it matters. Where’s Trepe?”
Vin snaps the mirror shut. “That Trepe,” she says, while leaning over to adjust my cravat. “Late. And what is she gonna do when she gets here? Tell us to get together with our training partners and run through some exercises. We may as well do it now instead of waiting around.”
“Why’s she late? Do you know?”
“No.” She smiles. “Maybe she fell off her pedestal and broke.”
Vin’s real name is Virginia but only teachers and stalkers call her that. Here’s a picture: shoulder length dark blonde hair, green eyes, lightly freckled skin, sarcastic smile. She’s no bitch. There’s a brain in that blonde head of hers. But she’s always got a boyfriend in tow.
Instructor Trepe swoops into the classroom and throws a sorry-I’m-late-class over her shoulder. Her uniform is stiffly perfect, and her hair is secured into a bun. Every time we see her she’s dressed like this. We reckon she doesn’t even need pins to hold up that bun anymore. She probably cut a hole in her pillow so she could sleep without having to undo it.
Everyone scrambles into their seats, and the couple up the back quickly grind out their cigarettes. “I bumped into an old friend and I couldn’t help talking.” She collapses into her chair and starts taking the roll.
Vin doesn’t like Instructor Trepe. Neither do I, actually, but most people think she’s great. Just looking at her, you just know that she’s that selfless, fun kind of teacher that everyone just
has to enjoy. She’s the one on all the Balamb Garden pamphlets, clutching a clipboard or bending over a student’s work with a frozen, pamphlet-smile. But she’s just like any other instructor, and I don’t see anything particularly special about her. She has her own fan club, the Trepies. They follow her around and suck up to her and purposely fail exams so they can get into her classes again. They’re a ridiculous species. Thorny loves stirring them up.
We see old photographs of Trepe all the time. She was one of the six who brought on the end of Sorceress War II. When we look at her now we see a lady who used to be pretty but whose face has just
crumpled. Whenever she smiles she just looks sad. I guess when the peak of your life happened at eighteen and now you’re twenty-six, you don’t have much to look forward to anymore.
The roll call done, Instructor Trepe begins to talk. Vin whispers the words along with her. “Now class, as most of your field exams are coming up, today we’re going to have a training period. Get together with your training partners and go to the training centre, or if you’d like to go outside the premises and fight the monsters out there, I’ll give you a permission slip. For those of you not training, please study quietly. Any questions? Good.”
Trepe could be an airhostess. “Would you like fish or chicken? Chicken? Sorry, we’ve only got fish left.” Not only does she ask pointless questions, but she loves stating the obvious. “Remember to junction your GFs.” Duh.
Vin threads her fingers through her metal knuckles. “Try and con Vandel into going outside Garden. Then we’d be together.” Flipping back her hair, she sashays over to her training partner, this shy guy called David. My training partner’s Vandel Scott, an explosives and handgun expert, which is a poor match but there was an odd number of people learning the same weapon as me.
Vandel usually hangs around Vin and I, but we’ve barely had time to talk to him lately. Explosives is a hard field to major in and so he filled his hours studying, eating, sleeping, studying. Here’s a picture: Combed black hair, dark brown eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses, long fingers, shy smile. I suppose Trepe thought it’d be cute making us training partners cos we look like the perfect couple. Sigh.
Not that we’re a couple. Vandel won’t budge. Those sexy long fingers of his are made for disconnecting bombs, not holding a woman. Not that I
want us to be a couple but…
Ah, forget it.
There he is now, standing right in front of me. “Hey August.”
“Hi. Listen, can we not go to the training centre?”
“Sure.”
“Can you ask Trepe for the movement pass? She hates my guts.”
“Anything you say.” He turns around and joins the crowd around Trepe’s desk fighting over permission slips. Everyone takes the first chance they get to leave class.
“‘Anything you say,’
darling,” Vin whispers in my ear. “He’s a
slaaaaaave for you.” I elbow her without a second thought.
Out on the beach there’s nothing but sand and Fastitocalons, so we set about slaying some of those. When we get bored of it we sit on the ground and the four of us talk. David doesn’t say much though. He never says much, just, “You guys, I think we should stop resting now, you guys, we might get in trouble, you guys…”
“Look, David,” Vin finally sighs. “There’s some weird things popping up in the sand over there. If you’re so scared about getting in trouble even though Trepe is kilometres away, go and investigate.”
David pouts and crosses his arms. I didn’t even think guys were capable of pouting until I met David. Vandel continues talking about his Explosives exam. “It was basically lots and lots of simulations. As soon as you solved one you got moved to another. In.
Sane. By the end of it everyone one was like, standing in puddles of their own
sweat. How was yours, August?”
I had decided to take the detailed, lengthy course of code breaking. “What do you expect? Gave us a page full of codes, solve them. They gave us an hour.”
“Did you get them all?”
“All but one.”
Vin cracks her knuckles. “Looks like I got the better deal, then.”
“Like you
needed to learn to hack computers,” Vandel scoffs.
“I play to my strengths,” Vin smiles.
“Yeah well, take a look at Thorny. Now he’s a liar. A
real liar.”
“That class was jam-packed! Everyone wanted to be one.”
“Well, it’d be fun. I wanted to go in it except it was full by the time I got around to signing up.”
“You
guys, don’t you think we should go to the forest and find a T-Rexaur instead of sitting around?”
Vin flicks sand at him. “Fine, David! Great Hyne!” She heaves herself up and dusts the sand off her uniform. David has already wandered away in the direction of the forest. Vandel and I look at each other and shrug.
“You know, we should go to the fire cavern instead. It’ll be more interesting,” Vandel suggests.
“Forget it,” Vin sniffs. “Snotty little Davie has already made up his mind,” she says, too loud.
David whips around. “Hey, unlike you, I want to pass this exam!” he shoots back.
“Davy, honey, you’re too wimpy to pass your exam.” David’s fists tighten. “You know what’s gonna happen to you?” Vin sneers. “You’re gonna end up like Trepe and that lot, save the world at eighteen and be kicked around at twenty-six.”
“Don’t insult Instructor Trepe!”
“Get lost, Trepie,” Vin laughs. “Instructor Trepe made a mistake. She didn’t realise you can only save the world once.”
“What was she supposed to do? Let the world suffer while lying around concerned about her life ahead?” David bleats. “You don’t
do that! You save the world instead of thinking about your selfish ambitions.”
He has a point there. Vin makes a face. “Trepe should’ve seen it coming. Now she teaches twitchy kids like us and all her missions are too easy for her. She should’ve quit her job and gotten married or something. At least then-”
“Shut up! Shut up!” David yells. As if he can’t bear the thought of Trepe marrying.
“-At least then she’d have something to live for. By the end of this year she’ll probably kill herself cos she’s got such a boring life.”
“Stop it, Vin,” Vandel interrupts. “You’re freaking him out. Let’s go.”
As Vin stalks off and I run to catch up, I can hear David whimpering to Vandel, “How would
she know if Trepe hates her life?”
--
All right. It's back.
While I'm aware that the original thread is floating around in General Chat somewhere, I still thought it best to repost from the beginning, giving both you and me the chance to get back into the story. Hopefully all my editing will smooth things out and make this a better fic than before.
To second-time readers: thanks for reading Crack and putting up with all my dawdling. Seriously, thank you. I really hope that you enjoy reading Crack just as much as you did the first time around, several years ago. Hopefully this time Crack will
end, too.
To any first-time readers: thanks for giving this a chance; hope you enjoy it.
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