Author's Notes: Okay, so here is the next part. I had hoped to also throw up 3 soon, but... well, that is a story for the next author's notes (and either epic fail or awesome), but just know that I decided to do a bit more effort on it and it will thus be delayed.

Hyne's War: Chapter 2

Thursdays were Nida's least favorite day of the week, something that always came to mind when the alarm near his bed excitedly buzzed it's five am wake up call. With a groan the pilot shook the last remains of some soon forgotten dream from his head. So began the thursday morning routine. As Nida started to lift himself to his elbows, to better facilitate the turning off of the alarm and getting out of bed, an arm reached across his chest to hold him back. Elijah's voice grumbled in annoyance at the other SeeD's rousing, and the man did his level best to keep Nida from rising.

“Every week you try this, and every week it is futile. Just let me go.”

“Stay in bed,” Elijah grumbled. “Just a few minutes.”

“You know I can't. Too much to do before the weekly meeting.”

The reason that Nida loathed Thursday more than any other day of the week was because it was on Thursday mornings that the counsel of senior SeeDs that Squall had set up just after the war had their meetings. These things, sometimes lasting as long as three hours, covered all sorts of SeeD relevant material, such as testing results and requests, mission debriefings, and ways to improve training. They also covered current political tensions or agreements between the countries of the world, as SeeD missions often sprung up from malcontent over these agreements or tensions. These meetings, while not bad in and of themselves, could get tedious or find little done for presentation to Cid on Friday mornings, and Nida disliked how it upset his normal schedule and forced him to get up earlier and go to bed later on Thursdays.

“You could. It wouldn't kill you to skip training for a single day to stay in bed with me, would it?”

Nida smiled and lightly placed his hand on Elijah's cheek, a slight tap indicating that Elijah's thought was sweet, but please let me up now. The red head seemed to miss this meaning, and soon Nida's fingers were coming together to pinch the skin of Elijah's cheek. Still he was restrained, and thus Nida twisted the flesh pinched between his fingers. This elicited a yelp from Elijah and the man withdrew from Nida, quickly wriggling back on the bed away from the pilot. Meanwhile Nida, smile still in place, took the chance to leave the bed behind.

Once free from the tangles of Elijah and his bed, Nida made his way over to the closet to change. A worn t-shirt and jeans were thrown on as well as a pair of boots, all of which he would trade out for uniform after he showered in the training area post-practice. Clothes on hangers were then pushed this way and that as Nida looked hard over the series of hooks that filled his closet and bore his prized possessions. All along the walls of the closet, all polished to a gleaming perfection, was a collection of various pole arms. They ranged from the most basic pikes and spears to the more complex fauchard forks, and elegant war scythe. Nida's fingers brushed over the shafts of the weapons before he took a small, plain metal stick from a series of racks with near identical sticks of various lengths.

Only moments after the stick was tossed from left hand to right and the right flicked backwards, Nida heard another yelp of pain. Carefully he turned to frown at Elijah, who was cradling his right hand to his chest, the knuckles already turning red from the light blow Nida had dealt them.

“Give it up. You've never been able to sneak up on me this early in the morning. Hell, you've never been able to sneak up on me at all.”

Elijah stood there, rubbing the back of his hand and giving Nida an almost convincing pout. The only reason the pilot didn't give in to the look was because he'd done the same thing to his own hands on accident often enough to know that the force he had used had merely stung the offending digits rather than really hurt them. Still, when Elijah kept up the act, Nida sighed and took the 'injured' hand. This he cradled in his own hand, on top of the metal stick to remind Elijah just why he'd gotten hurt, and under his breath Nida whispered the release of one of the cure spells he had perpetually fixed to mind.

It was hard, Nida knew, to fix any spell to mind for any length of time, allowing the person fixing it to use the spell even without junction. There were few people capable of the skill, and even less proficient in it, Fujin and her wind spells seeming to be the only one. Nida was only able to fix low end cures and the occasional silence when he really paid attention. Parting with one of the fixed spells was an annoyance, but he knew it was less painful than letting Elijah keep up the act. He loved the man, but he didn't have patience for these acts. Best to just get them over with.

“There. All better. Now, either go back to bed or get ready. Either way, let me get on my way.”

“Lend me one of your shirts,” Elijah said, ducking past Nida and into his closet. As the older SeeD moved past Nida, the pilot's hand came up to restrain him.

“No. I don't want to fight this morning. Just practice.”

“Don't worry, just a little spar won't hurt, right? It's been a while since I've fought you when you've had your sticks.”

“Pole arms,” Nida corrected, “and you haven't beat me when I've used them since I made SeeD. You wouldn't even be a warm up.”

“You're no fun.”

“Not what you said last night,” Nida countered as he went back into the closet, selecting out the matching tambo length metal stick to the one already in hand. These two went into a leather pouch slung on one hook, as well as a few other small lengths of metal pole. Finally Nida's fingers brushed the wood of his favored weapons, and at last came to rest on a long metal pole almost seven feet in length. Despite how heavy the simple stick was, almost half again the weight of Nida's normal pole arms, he picked it up easily before heading for the door.

“Now he feels playful,” Elijah grumbled from the bed again, replying to Nida's previous joking.

“I'll see you at the meeting,” Nida said when he paused at the door. “And set the alarm, or you'll sleep through it.”

“Yes mommy.”

Nida barely heard this last jibe, already as he was on the way out of the room, shaking off that weird after feeling he normally associated with deja vu passed.

Seven thirty found a freshly fed, showered, and changed Nida slipping into the conference room down the hall from the Headmaster's office, coffee and bagel in hand. He wasn't surprised to find that he wasn't the first person to have arrived, he never was. Squall always arrived first from what he heard, almost an hour before the scheduled start of the meeting. At the moment the SeeD Commander was giving his coldest glare to the unnaturally perky Selphie. Xu was also present at her accustomed place at the table to Squall's left, sorting through the reports she and Quistis were charged with delivering in the course of the meeting, not that the blond woman was present yet.

Nida carefully placed the hot cup of coffee and bagel on the table before his seat before settling in, purposefully nudging his foot against that of the brown, auburn, and black mass across the table from him. For a moment Irvine's head rose, the look he shot Nida dirty enough to carry a thousand curses without a word. The pilot just smiled and waved slightly to his almost-pupil.

“You know, I think we should move our training sessions up to this time of morning,” Nida teased the gunner, and was amazed to see the look grow even more dirty, as well as almost as icy as one you'd expect from Squall.

It was no secret that Irvine hated the timing of these weekly meetings, almost opting to sleep through them. The gunner was more of a night owl than an early bird.

“Fuck you,” Irvine croaked out.

“That isn't polite.”

“Must you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Act cheerful?”

Nida smiled. “Must you sleep? Surely you get enough.”

Something in the conversation had drawn Selphie's attention, and now she threw in her own opinion, poking Irvine the whole time.

“I tried to get him to sleep, but he's got so much energy.”

Nida couldn't help but snicker when Irvine turned a little red at Selphie's comment.

“Don't worry,” Nida said once he regained control of himself, “I won't tell anyone.”

“Zell will be here soon enough, and Quistis once she's dismissed the homeroom she's covering for Instructor Aki,” Selphie said, changing the subject for Irvine's sake. “Then we can start the meeting.”

“Elijah,” both Nida and Irving corrected, the former patiently and the latter in annoyance.

“Oh yeah,” Selphie said, rubbing the back of her head. “He's always so late that I forget he's even supposed to be here.”

Nida couldn't blame her for this. More often than not Elijah would show up late, earning dirty looks from Quistis and Xu, and indifference bordering on ignorance from the rest. The times he did show up on time were few and far between. With a sigh Nida reached out for one of the phones in the middle of the table and quickly dialed his room extension. He was about to hang up after the fifth ring with no answer when there was a clattering sound, a curse, and a thump. This last part was presumably Elijah falling out of bed, considering the resultant groan.

“What?” the voice on the other line demanded.

“Seven thirty-five.”

“Shit!”

And then the line was dead, and Nida was replacing the receiver, trying to figure out what exactly in his room Elijah had knocked over to get that initial clattering sound.

Irvine frowned, starting hard at Nida, “He just get up?”

“Wasn't up at all. Figured if I called now he'd have just enough time to get here without being late.”

“He'll be late,” Irvine said, sounding exceedingly confident of the fact.

“He won't.”

“Ten gil.”

“You're on.”

The pair settled down into silence as Quistis and Zell arrived. Two minutes to go before the meeting was scheduled to start found Irvine lifting his head at last, and glancing frequently at his watch. Just as the gunner seemed to be feeling confident, Nida smiled and pushed the now only warm coffee and the bagel to the seat on his right, just as the door of the conference room was sliding open. Elijah stumbled in to his seat, grabbed up the coffee, and had half of it down before he even took a breath. With a groan Irvine fished out his wallet and withdrew a ten gil note, which he slid over to Nida just as Squall cleared his throat to indicate that it was time to focus.

Nothing exciting happened for the first hour of the meeting, during which Xu and Quistis relayed all of the most basic SeeD related information for the week. Nida sat through announcements of who had passed which tests, who was scheduled for which tests, and who had just signed up for what levels of examination. It was all tedious and uninteresting. They covered notes from the previous weeks, who had been sent on what long term missions, and the decisions Cid had made about requests from the SeeD counsel. At last the meeting was getting to the interesting parts, and Nida really began to focus. Results of missions were far more interesting than the potential of missions after all.

“Oh,” Xu said after coming to the end of SeeD Burgess's report on work in the Winhill area. “SeeD Burgess wanted to note some rumors he heard when in Winhill resupplying. There is word of a stranger recently moving to the town, that the locals described as 'blond,' 'young,' and 'scarred.'”

The members of the 'Orphanage Gang,' all looked up so fast at this comment that Nida was sure the assembled group had several cases of whiplash. The group had been on the lookout for the former Sorceress Knight after his departure from Balamb Town four months previous. Nida knew Squall would order someone to Winhill to test the rumor, and personally did not envy the task of whoever it was given to. Seifer was a hard man to track down they'd learned in these last months, and Nida had never really gotten on with the blond himself.

Squall restrained himself from saying anything to the affect of a deployment to Winhill, merely nodding to Xu before gesturing for silence so that he could speak. Once that was achieved he picked up a piece of paper and looked over it quickly before reading.

“Before we leave today it is important to note that Trabia Garden will soon be celebrating the retirement of their oldest and longest lasting employee, one Boyce Megill, weapons master and combat instructor.. Apparently Megill is the only remaining employee they had who had been with the Garen since its establishment. He was previously a Galbadian soldier, a veteran of the war again Adel, and even worked for a time here in Balamb, though only as a temporary instructor. Cid had hand picked Megill to be the weapons master here, but he had opted for Trabia...”

Selphie, who had been squirming around in her seat ever since the utterance of 'Megill,' no longer seemed to be able to hold back what she wanted to say, and the words burst from her in a rush.

“Megill was SO cool! I learned nunchaku from him! He was awesome at picking the right weapons for the right people and...”

Despite the look of relief on Squall's face that he hadn't been forced to talk any longer, he did now cut off Selphie by clearing his throat. The perky brunette looked down at the table almost apologetically.

“Trabia Garden has requested that former students of Megill be allowed the chance to join in the celebration. It will take place over the course of a weekend, allowing students to be present for different parts without draining resources from any one Garden too much. As such we must compile a list of interested students and SeeDs. We've also been asked to arrange for an honor guard, two mid to high level SeeDs to represent each Garden.”

Again Squall stopped, this time not because of any vocal insertion, but because four hands around the table had been raised. Selphie was bouncing in her seat with both arms raised and waving, Irvine trying to avoid the flailing limbs as he raised his own hand, a bit more meekly. Xu, even as her left hand was jotting down some notes, her eyes glued to the paper before her with a look of indifference, held her right hand well above her head. And, most shocking to Nida, and likely others around the table, he found that Elijah had risen from one of his feigned naps to raise his hand. Squall looked at each of the four in turn before continuing.

“You would like positions in the honor guard?”

For a moment no one responded. At last Elijah spoke, which Nida was sure was the only thing odder than Elijah making it to a meeting on time or volunteering for anything.

“I don't know about the rest of them, but Megill trained me himself when he was working here for a year. Everything I know, everything I've achieved, is due to Boyce Megill. I feel obligated, no, honored, to be there when he finally moves on to greener pastures.”

“I can't help but agree,” Xu admitted. “I was training with staves, and I did rather poorly. When Megill saw me he handed me my first crossbow...”

Selphie bounced around excitedly. Everyone had already heard her opinion. Irvine alone remained silent about whatever ties he had to Megill.

“I see,” Squall said. “I would ask you, Xu, to seek out and prepare another Trabian and Galbadian SeeD. If there is nothing else, you are all dismissed.”

Immediately everyone began to tidy their areas, with Selphie bounding over to Elijah to ask him about his time with Megill, commenting that it must have been something great for Elijah to volunteer for something. Elijah just waved the girl off and headed for the door, complaining about a lack of real food. For a moment Elijah caught Nida's eye before giving a slight inclination of his head, the implication that Nida should join him for a bit to talk. Nida would have obliged the man, if only to thank him for being reliable enough to make ten gil off of when a single sentence cut into the after meeting buzz.

“Nida, a moment.”

The pilot looked to Squall and nodded, caught off guard by the request. Squall was one of few people in Garden these days that didn't seem to notice Nida at all, so the pilot being specifically called out both frightened and excited Nida. The very prospect of a few moments of Squall's attention made Nida want to smile. While he'd never told Elijah, or anyone really, Nida had kept his eyes on the gunblader for the last year and a half, ever since he had mistakenly stumbled upon a late night training duel between Squall and Seifer. The way the brunette had moved during that fight, holding his own against the more powerful and obviously slightly more experienced Seifer had captivated Nida, and the memory had stuck in his mind. Since then Nida had always watched Squall when he could, and had wanted to do something to earn some sort of recognition in Squall's eyes. He'd hoped his achievements as a SeeD would earn him some of Squall's attention, but no such luck.

At this point even a few moments of Squall's time was more than enough to make up for the annoyances of a day spent waking up to early, dealing with an early morning Elijah (as Elijah seemed to get more laid back as the day progressed), and sitting through a long and almost pointless meeting.

Squall waited until everyone else had left before looking up from his papers to address Nida. The look on his face was... blank from all that Nida could read of Squall. The silence extended for a while before Nida cleared his throat, hoping that the noise would prompt something from the seemingly pensive brunette. Luckily the tactic seemed to jolt Squall back to reality.

“You're from Winhill,” Squall started, and even that simple statement sent Nida's mind racing with possibilities.

'He knows where I'm from,' Nida's mind said as his lips took charge of responding. “As from it as a Garden student could be.”

For a moment Squall almost looked curious, so Nida felt obligated to explain himself. “Like a lot of Garden students in the early years, I was a war orphan. I just happened to be adopted quite early in life, by a lady from Winhill. But I wasn't raised there for very long. She passed a few years later, and it was decided that I should be sent away to Garden, as no one else in the town could spare what was needed to properly raise a child at the time. Things were harder back then. But I've been here at Garden so long that I'm practically an outsider to the people back home. The fact that I'm the only SeeD to come from that town means very little to them.”

Then, realizing what he'd said, and what he'd learned from Selphie and Irvine, Nida quickly amended this statement. “Except, of course, for you.”

Squall nodded. “But they consider me an outsider, far more than you. I'm 'that Balamb SeeD' in their eyes, while I hear they refer to you as 'our young SeeD.'”

The words made Nida flinch. The people of the village did refer to him as such when he visited old acquaintances in town or his mother's grave. Along with that was 'young Nida' and 'Daphne's boy.' While an outsider in some ways, Nida was still considered by the people of the village to be one of them in most ways, raised by a villager as a villager. Still, he hadn't expected someone else to know any of this, or even the difference in opinion the villagers had about Squall and Nida.

“Laguna and Ellone hear whispers when visiting there, though her more than him. And SeeDs passing through relay all they hear, as we learned today.”

Finally Nida figured out what should have been obvious when this conversation started.

“No.”

This time Nida was sure he could read Squall's silence. It said to him 'you don't really have a choice.'

“In understand why you wouldn't want to send Selphie or Zell, but there are other choices.”

Squall sighed and shook his head. “Quistis was his instructor, Xu plain disliked him. Irvine and Seifer never saw eye to eye. And if I go, there will be fighting.”

“Elijah then.”

Again a negative from Squall. “Not only will Elijah, among other things, be at the party for Megill, but he sticks out like a sore thumb in a town like that. Elijah was also the squad leader for Seifer's first SeeD examination. There were disagreements between them over how to handle something. Elijah narrowly passed, Seifer narrowly failed.”

This Nida had never known, but he didn't question it's likelihood. Squall had no reason to lie.

“You are the best choice. No previous ties to Seifer, knowledge of the area, capabilities with stealth and information retrieval. People will talk to you, and you will know how to head off rumors of your arrival. High scores in diplomacy and combat, and recommendations from A-Class SeeDs to be tested...”

At this Nida was speechless. While he was sure that most of this Squall would have found in his records, Nida was shocked that Squall had bothered to read his records, much less remember so much. And then his mind latched on to the final comment. Quistis had only implied the possibility of a future recommendation the day before.

“Who... When... What?”

“Irvine was the first,” Squall said, understanding what Nida meant, “almost two months ago. Selphie, Zell, and Quistis have all thrown in their opinions in this last two weeks. I also have heard from Xu and Elijah for a while now. It seems that you are held in high regard. If you are as good as I hear and read, then you are the logical choice here. Consider it also a good chance for me to gauge your abilities myself.”

Nida sat down heavily in his chair, utterly bewildered by this sudden turn of events. Not only had he apparently caught Squall's attention somehow, but the SeeD Commander was going to be watching and testing him by way of his dealing with Seifer? This was all almost too much.

Still, Nida took the chance to think about this. It would be nice to impress Squall somehow, even with only his ability to get close to Seifer, not that he expected to get much from the blond.

“Well then,” he said after he'd calmed himself down, “let's see how quickly you can work up a briefing for me, Commander.”