Apparently, I did start the FF7/FF8 KH-esque crossover from hell. And forgot about it.

Note: This will probably be massively rewritten at some point.


They had all ended up in the campus infirmary, except for Leon. This would have relieved Zack a lot more if Leon rushing off without two words hadn't been the start of the whole cascade of events.

He looked around the room, packed with three cots, four chairs, and more bodies than were probably supposed to fit in it. Cloud was still asleep, snoring slightly, but Zack tried not to worry since he wasn't sporting any bandages. It looked like only he, Tifa, and Sephiroth had been bestowed with those - which wasn't even all that surprising. Tifa's were wrapped around her knuckles, which probably just meant she hadn't had time to pull on her gloves. Zack remembered being nicked by a bullet sometime before things got blurry and dark, so that explained his own badge of honor. And Sephiroth - well, he didn't know what had happened, but a head wrapped in clean linen and an IV line were probably a step up from things. Had he really seen a feathered wing sprouting from Sephiroth's back?

"Anybody know what hell broke loose?" he wondered out loud.

"No!" Yuffie snapped, throwing the magazine she had been pretending to read across the room. It landed against the pale, cream-painted wall with a ruffled splat and slid to the floor. Aerith bent to retrieve it, but wisely didn't offer it back to the girl. "No one's been telling us anything!"

Sephiroth did not look up from his crossword puzzle. "If I'm not mistaken, someone used sleeping powder on the lot of you. No one was seriously injured, so I expect they're simply waiting for it to wear off of everyone so they only have to explain themselves once."

"Sleeping powder?" Zack frowned. "We're college students. Not terrorists."

"We were kind of in the middle of a gigantic firefight," Tifa said ruefully. "And it's not like we were listening, exactly. I think they just wanted us out of the way."

"And you have to admit, it seems to have worked," Aerith added.

"Okay, so, well, who's 'they'?"

The door opened. Every open eye in the room fastened upon it hungrily.

A wary Leon peered inside - head craning around the door first, as if unsure of his welcome, then followed by the rest of him, still frowning like thunder. "Strife still out?"

Yuffie waved an angry hand. "Please, I could wake him. Just gimme a bucket of ice water."

"Esuna."

Cloud continued snoring.

"You know," Aerith said, "Cloud's been pulling all-nighters because of finals - "

"Ugh, don't remind me," Leon said. He walked over to Cloud's cot, and that was when Zack noticed that he was barefoot. Then again, the crazy kid had torn out of his and Cloud's dorm room on roller blades. He shook Cloud by the shoulder a little, then sighed. "Oh, whatever. I guess enough of you are awake. Where do you need me to start?"

Zack almost felt sorry for Leon, what with the way Yuffie, Tifa, and Sephiroth verbally tackled and pinned him like a fly to the wall. But then Leon held up a hand and said, "All right, fine. My name's not really Leon Loire," and pulled off his eye patch.

Leon's left eye was whole and undamaged under the patch, the long, tearing scar skipping neatly over the eye. Zack stared; it was one of three scars of varying depth and length that bit across Leon's face, which had branded him easily from the moment he'd first set foot on campus. They were from torama claws, it was rumored; Leon had never discussed it with any of them, but it was well-known that he was ex-SeeD.

"You were working undercover," Sephiroth said rather than guessed. "But why would you make yourself more memorable, rather than less?"

Leon blinked at him for a moment, then shrugged. "Maybe I shouldn't have worried so much about being recognized. Look, it's easy enough to add a new scar. It's not so easy to remove one - you can hide it some with makeup, but not that much, and definitely not if you're going to be sharing a room with someone." He glanced at Cloud, then tapped the middle scar, the one that ran right between his eyes. "I already had a scar here."

Zack was never going to know why none of them had figured it out earlier. "You're Squall Leonhart," he stated simply.

Of course he was. He was the right age, height, build - he hadn't even dyed his hair, though he'd let it grow out. He wasn't wearing the Commander's iconic fur-trimmed jacket or his inexplicable many belts - although suddenly Zack was overwhelmed by the idea of the stoic SeeD Commander wearing Leon's clothes. Which was crazy, of course, because he knew they were the same person, but - Leon was Leon, his best buddy Cloud's insane roommate, who happened to favor pale pink and tight pants, went roller blading with Yuffie on weekends, squabbled with Tifa over the last slice of chocolate cake, and supposedly harbored a crush on Professor Valentine. The two personae were so at odds - Zack found himself thinking that Leon must be an incredible actor. And that was probably why Yuffie was angry - even though Leon was Cloud's roommate, she was the one who had gotten closest to the dark-haired teenager.

Leon sighed. "Yeah. Well. Whatever. I was supposed to be keeping an eye on some of Odine's ex-apprentices, but - it didn't work out too well."

"What, they didn't buy your cover story?" Yuffie sneered.

"I suppose not," Leon said tiredly, " though I don't see why not. Nobody recognized me, so what's one more ex-SeeD university student? There are four others on campus."

Sephiroth snorted. "Hojo is paranoid enough that he wouldn't need a concrete reason to suspect you before declaring you the enemy."

Leon nodded. "I know that now. We still have to go through his notes, but he was ranting about conspiracy theories the whole time." He shifted slightly, and Zack realized that his body posture was suddenly completely unfamiliar, even more alien to Zack than seeing the undamaged left eye. "And, before you ask, I'm not allowed to tell you guys everything. You don't have clearance."

"Not even me?" Sephiroth asked, a hint of danger in his voice.

"Kiros will set up a debriefing with you later."

"Kiros?" Aerith repeated. "You don't mean the President's aide, do you?"

Leon gave her a funny look. "He's very efficient and tactful. Please trust me when I say that you don't want Laguna to ever conduct a debriefing instead of Kiros."

Zack spoke up before Yuffie could make good on the clear threat in her eyes. "Uh, Leon? Since when were you on a first name basis with the President?"

Of course, Leon looked at him as if he'd grown three heads. "Don't you Estharians use the father's surname? I just about told everyone I was Laguna's son, didn't I?"

Yuffie squeaked incoherently and made throwing motions in Leon's direction. Aerith discreetly placed the magazine well out of reach. Tifa said diplomatically, "We thought Loire was a common Galbadian surname. You've never mentioned him before."




Last edited 8/19/08