The first thing Seifer did after it happened, once he finally came out of his room, was to go out and buy a pair of black boots with two-inch heels, so he'd still be able to look down at Squall.

The second thing he did was learn to walk in the damn things.

The third thing he did was storm into Squall's office and demand to be put on a mission, because no fucking way was he going to sit around Garden with nothing to do while he waited for Rinoa and Edea to figure out how to fix him.

The whole damn train ride to Timber, Zell wouldn't stop sneaking glances at him and looking away, like he was trying to cheat on a test. "What the hell are you looking at, Dincht?" Seifer snapped. Managed to catch himself before wincing at the sound of his own voice.

Zell started. "N-nothin', man!" he said, flailing a bit, then went back to being unnaturally quiet. He was hardly even moving, except for the nervous tapping of his fingers and the quick glances.

"Stop it. You're going to give yourself whiplash."

"It's weird, okay? I'm not used to --" he gestured spastically, "-- you look --"

Seifer glared. "I look what?"

" -- like a girl!" he said, like Seifer didn't fucking know that. Like he hadn't been startled and then pissed every time he'd looked in the mirror since it happened. "I - I mean, like a woman. I -- I mean --"

"If you don't shut your mouth," Seifer snarled, "I swear I'll put your face through a window."

"S-sorry."

Seifer was on his feet, suddenly, hauling Zell up by his collar. "Are you deaf, Chicken-wuss?"

"Wh -- what did you just call me?!"

Seifer smirked. Still had a few inches on him, even as a chick. "I called you a wussy little chicken, shrimp. What are you gonna do about it?"

Zell jerked away, throwing his fists up. "You wanna fight?!"

Seifer spread his arms. "Try me. Just 'cause I have tits doesn't mean I can't still kick your ass 'til you cry for mommy."

Zell blinked, stared shamelessly at Seifer's chest for a few seconds, blinked again. Seifer rolled his eyes. There wasn't even that much tosee. Seifer'd looked plenty himself. "Man," Zell said, sounding amazed, rubbing at the back of his neck. "You're taking this really well."

Seifer grit his teeth. Sat back down, put his arms on the back of the seat. Casual. "Still more of a man than you."

Zell sputtered, and Seifer wondered absently why he didn't question Dincht's masculinity more often. Probably 'cause it was just too damn easy.

"Unless you've got a fix for this," Seifer growled at him, "shut up and focus on not screwing up the mission."

Zell shut up. Seifer was faintly disappointed; beating Dincht to a pulp was starting to seem more and more appealing. It'd pass the time 'til they reached Timber, at least.

Dincht actually managed to stay quiet for a few minutes. Gave up glancing over at Seifer every few seconds in favor of staring hard out the window. Finally he looked over and said, "So, we don't have a password or anything," and Seifer was momentarily confused. "How're we supposed to find these resistance guys?"

Seifer snorted, crossing his legs (Zell glanced at them). "I have a plan."

The Aphorora looked the same as it had last time Zell'd been there, right down to the big weird screen with the picture that morphed from a lady to a tiger. There were a few people sitting at the tables. Some of them turned to look. "So, what's your big plan?" he asked Seifer, following him -- her -- over to the bar.

"Get drunk," Seifer said, and ordered two shots of Reagan.

"What?"

The bartender poured out the shots, and Seifer picked one up. "Just leave the bottle," he said.

Zell grabbed at Seifer's arm before he -- she -- could down the shot. "The hell?! We can't do this in the middle of a --"

Seifer shoved him off. "Shut. Up, you --"

"Excuse me, miss," someone cut in. They both turned, blinking. The dude was talking to Seifer. "Is this guy bothering you?"

Seifer looked like he didn't understand the question. "What?"

The guy jerked a thumb at Zell. "You want me to get rid of this guy?"

"What?!" Zell yelled. This guy was totally scrawny, and where the hell did he get off --

Whoa, now Seifer really looked pissed. "Get lost, asswipe," he said, grabbed the bottle, and stalked off to a table by the door, his heels clicking loudly against the floor.

Zell hurried after him. "Did that guy just --"

Seifer grabbed a fistful of his jacket and yanked him down into the seat next to his. "What part," he said, his voice a furious whisper, "of 'undercover' did you not understand? You mention one word about the mission again, and I'll send you back to Garden with my gunblade up your ass, got it?"

Yeah, okay, maybe Seifer wasn't taking this as well as Zell'd thought. "But -- "

Seifer slammed his shot glass down on the table so hard most of the drink spilled over the side. He filled it up again, glanced around the bar, then discreetly poured it out onto the floor. Zell wondered if whatever the spell was that'd made him a girl had maybe given him some kind of brain damage. Before Zell could say so, Seifer slid the shot glass toward him and said quietly, "Play along."

Zell took the glass, hesitating. He took the bottle and poured out a shot, wondering the whole time if this was all some trick Seifer was playing on him that was somehow gonna turn out to be really, really embarrassing. But Seifer just watched him, eyebrows arched a little bit, while Zell picked up the glass, glanced around the bar to make sure no one was paying attention, and dumped it out onto the floor.

He passed the glass back to Seifer, and watched him do the whole weird ritual over again. This time, after dumping it out, Seifer wiped at the back of his mouth with his sleeve, as if he'd actually taken the drink, and Zell noticed again that Seifer's coat was way too big for him now that he was a girl. Weird.

After they each dumped a couple shots, Seifer suddenly said, "Yeah, well, if you ask me, the people in Timber are a bunch 'a pansies," his voice loud.

Zell looked at him. Her. Was -- did he have some secret way of getting drunk through the floor? Was that it? He was, like, showing off his weird new magic girl powers?

"Yeah, you heard me," he went on, like Zell'd disagreed with him. "Deling or, or whoever the hell that new guy is comes in here, starts getting in my face about the Galb, the, the fuckin' Galbian Republic, I'd kick his ass."

Oh. Oh, hey, yeah! "You're right! I mean, me too!" Zell'd never actually been drunk, but he thought he could do a pretty good job of faking it. "Kick his ass!"

Seifer rolled his eyes, and went on, "The resistance groups here are all too chickenshit to get anything done."

"Yeah, they're --"

Seifer talked over him. "We don't need a goddamn resistance anymore. We need a war."

Right about then, a couple guys at the bar finally noticed them and came over to see what they were yelling about.

The guys turned out to be Galbadian soldiers.

"Great plan, Seifer," Zell hissed.

"Shut up," Seifer said, examining the bars of their cell. "What do you think we should've done, walked up to everyone there and said, 'Hey, are you the Timber Wolves?'" He said it in this, like, annoying squeaky voice that was obviously supposed to be Zell's. "'Do you mind if we infiltrate your group and sabotage your plans?' Idiot."

"Tch! No, we could've talked to Rinoa --"

"No," Seifer said.

"-- or the leader of the Forest Foxes. She'd probably know where to find 'em."

Seifer went on inspecting the bars. Zell wondered what he was expecting to find. Like, a secret lever that opened a trap door or something? Yeah right. Zell got up and started checking them himself. "No, she wouldn't," Seifer said. "Caraway said they're a totally new group, and he'd know; he keeps pretty close tabs on the Timber resistance. Especially since Rinoa's trust fund finances one of the only active factions." He gave up on the bars and started poking at the bricks. "And how the hell was I supposed to know there'd be soldiers there? That place was always a hangout for the resistance."

"Well, yeah," Zell said, "so of course they'd have soldiers there out of uniform. That's probably how Caraway even heard about these guys in the first place." He checked out the lock, poking his finger at it. It was one those rusty, old-fashioned ones with the big keyhole. "At least we're not in D-District," Zell muttered. "The hell is this place, anyway? It's way old."

"It's the courthouse," Seifer answered him. "The army uses it as a small base right downtown. They'll probably transfer us in the morning."

"Great," Zell said. At least D-District was a place he'd broken out of once before. "How do you know all that, anyway?"

"I've been here before," he said. "I spent a whole summer fighting for the resistance."

Oh. Yeah. With Rinoa. Zell looked over at him. "What did you do all summer?" He imagined Seifer and Rinoa painting model trains together, and then wished he hadn't.

Seifer snorted. "Made a whole lot of plans that went goddamn nowhere."

He didn't sound sad, or like he missed it or anything. "Is that why you came back to Garden?"

"The Owls were small-time," he said, kicking at a few bricks. "I wanted to do something BIG."

"Like kidnap the President?"

Seifer didn't say anything to that, and Zell suddenly wished he hadn't brought it up. He went back to poking at the lock. It was pretty old and rusty; maybe with the right tools... "Hey, do you a have a hair clip?"

"What?" Seifer asked. There was a warning in his voice.

"A hair clip, or, like, a nail file or something."

"Why the hell would I have one of those?"

Zell faltered. "I -- I dunno, I just thought -- if we had something small and sharp, maybe we could try to pick the lock."

"Maybe I could break your fingers off and we could use one of those," Seifer suggested.

Zell didn't get a chance to say anything to that before they heard footsteps. There was a soldier coming down the hall. He glanced into their cell on his way past, but didn't seem much interested.

Seifer moved to the bars. "Hey," he said. "Hey, c'mere." The guard stopped, and kind of look around, like, Me? Seifer nodded, beckoning him closer, and like... smiled. Like -- like he was trying to be seductive or something.

Zell gaped. The soldier took a step closer.

"I have an important message for the Captain," Seifer said, pulling a piece of paper out of his coat pocket, and the soldier took another step closer, hand hovering near his sword. "The hell are you afraid of? I'm unarmed. Just get over here and take it," Seifer said. "You know how the Captain gets when he has to wait."

The soldier stopped, his fingers an inch away from the paper. "Uh," he said, "the Captain's a she."

Seifer darted one hand out through the bars, grabbed the guy's arm, and slammed him forward against the bars. Three times. The guy groaned, blood spurting out of his nose, and Seifer slammed him three more times, then let him drop.

The note fluttered to the floor. It looked like a receipt for the Balamb Junk Shop.

Seifer crouched, pulling the guy's leg through the bars, so he could reach his pockets to search for the keys.

Zell gaped.

Seifer went on pawing through the guy's stuff, pulling out his wallet, a coupon, some loose change. "...Shit," he said, eventually. "He doesn't have the key."

"What? You just beat the crap out of some totally random --"

Seifer held up a hand. "Quiet. Someone's coming."

Oh, great. If it was more soldiers, they were really screwed now --

It was the guy from the bar, the one Seifer blew off. He stopped in front of the cell, looked at the guy on the ground, and then at Seifer. "Wow," he said. "You're kind of a mean drunk, aren't you?"

Seifer stood, a hand on one hip. "What do you want?"

He looked from one of them to the other. "I heard what you said at the bar. You want to free Timber?"

Wh -- no way, was he --

"More than anything," Seifer said. Zell didn't get how he was so good at sounding sincere. As far as he knew, Seifer didn't really care about anything.

The guy nodded once, looked over at Zell. "You?"

Zell nodded quickly.

"You want to do something to make it happen?"

"Hell, yes," Seifer said.

"Yeah!" Zell added.

"You willing to get serious? Blow some shit up?"

"Sign me up," Seifer said.

The guy shook Seifer's hand through the bars. "Good." Zell wiped his palm on his shorts and held his hand out, too, but the guy was already pulling a screwdriver out of his pocket to work on the lock. "I'm Jake. Welcome to the Timber Wolves."