After making his way west from the desert where he’d woken up, Squall had seen more than enough to show him that Kana was telling the truth. He was no longer stuck in the time portal that he’d fallen into after their fight with the sorceress, but the place that he’d ended up in was so different that he might as well have been on another planet than in another time. Nothing was familiar. Not the names of the cities or the shapes of the continents. He may have always preferred the practical skills courses to the classroom studies back during his SeeD training, but he was positive that he would have remembered names as unique as Zephon and Serentestra if he’d ever heard them in History class. Maybe that meant that he’d fallen into the future instead of the past. Closer to the sorceress’ own time than his own.

A darker side of his brain whispered that maybe he’d never heard of any of these places because time compression had continued even after Ultimecia’s death, but he tried to wave that aside. If her plan had succeeded, then he wouldn’t be alive to see it. Probably nobody but her would be.

Squall had been told that a place called Torensten was one of the biggest nearby cities, and he was determined to reach it as soon as possible. If any of the others were here, then his biggest chance at finding them was in a city. Maybe it was a testament to how far he’d come over the past year that the idea of finding Zell at a corner hot dog stand or Irvine looking through magazines at an adult store made his lips twitch into a shadow of a smile. He hoped the other five had gotten home safely, but even he had to admit that he was getting desperate for a familiar face. Even if he was alone here, gathering information in a city was better than wandering the countryside doing nothing. It was a hell of a lot better than admitting that Ultimecia had taken him down with her and that he didn’t know how to get back up.

Squall had been advised to go southwest for a bit rather than travel through the Headstone Forest, but he had waved that advice aside. He wasn’t going to entertain local notions of a haunted forest. Whatever the quickest way to Torensten was, he was going to take it. Rinoa might be able to look after herself, especially with the other sorceresses dead, but he’d promised to be there for her. Trapped in a different time or not, he was still her knight. His old self would probably be scornful at how sentimental he’d gotten, but Squall wanted to get back to her or die trying.

After a couple hours in the forest, Squall was starting to admit that he might be doing that second option sooner than he’d thought.

Cursing under his breath, Squall paused to consider a nearby tree that had a thin covering of moss over its base. He’d taken to making a tiny nick in the bark of a tree every ten feet or so in case he got turned around, and there was the tell-tale cut from his sword.

(…Haven’t I just been going in a straight line along the path?)

Squall touched his forehead and forced himself to take a few breaths as he debated between taking a rest or barreling off the path since it clearly wasn’t doing him any good to stay on it. Finally, his reckless side and his desire to see Rinoa again won out over his rational side, and Squall spitefully stepped into the thicket of trees, working his way over fallen logs and overgrown roots as he made his way deeper into the forest. Eventually, he stumbled across what looked like a small cavern leading down into the earth, and he took a moment to glance into it, grimacing at the rotten smell coming from inside. Whatever animal lived inside, he wasn’t interested.

Unfortunately, a loud bellow from inside signaled that he’d gotten too close for the inhabitants’ comfort, and Squall managed to backflip out of the way just as green tentacles slashed their way out and a slimy monstrosity with a thousand eye stalks oozed its way out of the cavern. Finding himself level with a mouth full of jagged teeth, Squall just barely managed to roll to the side to avoid being bitten as he yanked his gunblade out from where it was belted to his side. It was just his luck to run into a damn Marlboro before he’d even managed to find a city.

Throwing out a hand, Squall pulled on the monster’s power, drawing a spell from it into himself. He recognized the powerful rumbling feeling as Quake, and without missing a beat, he threw the spell back at the ground directly in front of the creature before bolting towards a nearby tree to avoid the earthquake. The Marlboro roared in pain as it drew back to avoid the brunt of the spell, and Squall used the chance to run forwards and vault over its back, driving his blade into it at the same time that he pulled the trigger.

The resulting explosion threw Squall backward, but he managed to catch himself on a thick branch. The Marlboro looked to be hurting now with a thick goop running down its face and several of its eye stalks drooping. Gripping his gunblade tighter in both his hands, Squall was feeling pretty confident that he could finish it off. At least until he recognized the faint rumbling that was building in intensity. The monster was about to cast Bad Breath.

“Forget this,” he muttered, turning around and trying to bolt for higher ground. He wasn’t sure how many Esunas he had on him, but he wasn’t about to wait around to see if it was enough. Dashing uphill, Squall stumbled back onto the main forest path, almost toppling directly into two strangers. They were an unlikely pair of travelers—one was a red-eyed man in a black mask with a powerful aura around him and the other was an older man clutching onto a cane like he couldn’t walk without it. Squall had a moment of clarity that only a few months ago, he absolutely would have saved himself instead of them because it made the most strategic sense. He was the most likely to kill the monster. But if his time around the others had taught him anything, it was to hell with strategic sense. He’d gotten further in a year relying on others than he’d gotten in a lifetime trying to do things alone.

“Marlboro! Go up!” Launching himself towards them, Squall grabbed the old man around the waist and hefted him towards the branches of a tree, hoping that the man in the mask would understand and help out. Just as he got him situated on a high enough branch in the tree to avoid Bad Breath, the disgusting smog rolled over their area. Squall couldn’t see if the red-eyed man had gotten hit with the spell or not too because his vision went black as he dropped to his knees and retched.

“If you guys are still there. And you could finish it off. That’d be great.” he hacked as he blindly fumbled for his gunblade. At least he was just blind. He wasn’t poisoned.

Wait. No. There went the poison. Squall collapsed on his side with a groan. Rinoa might have to wait a little longer than he’d hoped.

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Squall heard the crash of the Marlboro bursting into the clearing even if he couldn’t see it since he was still suffering from the status effect of blind. Gripping his gunblade, he held it in front of him on the ground in case it chose to attack him, but a yell from nearby followed by the pained roar of the monster told him that the masked man from earlier had entered the fray. Squall let out a breath of relief as he tried to muster up the energy to cast a spell in spite of the painful poison pulsing its way through his veins. He had no idea how capable the white-haired man was in a fight, but if he could at least hold off the Marlboro until Squall could get back on his feet, then they might actually have a chance here.

“Esuna,” he muttered, grateful that he had a store of those spells. He felt instant relief as the warmth of the magic washed over him, and he took just a few more seconds of rest as his vision slowly returned and he was able to see the green grass poking up around him. He needed to be stingy with his spells here—he was unfamiliar with the monsters of this world and he wasn’t sure when he’d be able to find a good source of them to draw magic from again—but this definitely counted as an emergency.

Now that he’d gotten rid of his status effects, Squall renewed his grip on his gunblade and jumped to his feet. He was ready to take over fighting from the masked man again, but he blinked slowly as he noticed how injured the Marlboro already was. Most of its tentacles were already scattered around the clearing, and as he watched, the man leapt on top of the slimy creature’s back and delivered the finishing blow. The Marlboro fell in a heap of limbs and foul-smelling blood, and Squall whistled under his breath as the man sheathed his sword. Apparently Squall shouldn’t have been worried. He didn’t believe in fate, and he thought the entire concept was pretty stupid, but he had to admit that it was definitely his lucky day that he’d stumbled across someone who was actually capable.

The red-eyed man went over to help the old man out of the tree, and Squall rubbed the back of his neck a bit, deciding that he probably shouldn’t have thrown him that hard, but hey, who could argue results? Someone at his age might have not even survived getting hit with something as potent as Bad Breath.

After checking on the old man, the white-haired man walked over to Squall and asked if he was okay. Squall grimaced a bit at the thought of how pathetic he’d probably looked while he was poisoned and on the ground. “Thanks to you I guess.” He felt a lot more comfortable talking to this stranger than he had to Kana—maybe because he’d already lost every inch of dignity that he had in front of this man. There was no coming back from that now. “That was impressive by the way,” he reluctantly admitted. “You been trained?” Did they even have military bases like the Gardens in this world, or did that mean that this man came from somewhere else too?

Glancing over at the old man, Squall realized for the first time that he was struggling to stay upright without his cane and that he must have knocked it elsewhere while he was helping him. “…Sorry,” he muttered, but he wasn’t sorry enough to go over and let him lean on him or anything. The Rinoa in his head could look at him reproachfully all she wanted, but he wasn’t to that level of being comfortable around other people yet.

“…I’m Squall,” he volunteered, hoping to change the subject in his own head. “Are you two just passing through too? Heard some nasty stories about this place.” The stories included tales of illusions and getting lost but nothing about Marlboros. Go figure. You couldn’t trust anything you heard.

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The masked man nodded when Squall asked if he had been trained, and Squall quirked an eyebrow when he explained that he had studied both swordsmanship and stealth. Stealth was an interesting talent to be taught, and it suggested that the white-haired man was used to infiltrations. Still, if he didn’t want to go into more detail than that, then Squall wasn’t going to ask.

The man recognized his gunblade for what it was, and Squall’s lips twitched into a faint smirk when he asked if he knew how to use it. He definitely hadn’t made the best impression so far since the man hadn’t seen the first part of his battle with the marlboro. He’d only seen him get blasted with Bad Breath, so he couldn’t blame him much for asking. “Yeah, I guess you could say that,” he echoed what the man had said before. If he was holding on to some of his cards, then Squall would too.

The man proceeded to retrieve a stick from a nearby tree and to carve the end straight enough to replace the old man’s walking stick. While he was busy with that, Squall took a moment to assess his condition. He was feeling a little weak from the poison, but he’d hold off before he used one of his finite Cure spells. He only had a limited number of each spell after all, and until he was more comfortable with the layout of this world and where certain monsters lived that he could draw from, he needed to be careful with his supply.

The red-eyed man finished getting the old man settled before he returned to talk to Squall, finally introducing himself. “Keimusho,” Squall echoed, deciding that it was definitely suspicious that he wanted to be called by a nickname in front of other people. That suggested he was either famous or infamous, and Squall would have pressed him on that harder if he wasn’t starting to suspect that travelling in a group might be safer in this forest. “Alright. I might just call you Mu now then so I don’t slip up,”

Keimusho introduced the old man next, but there wasn’t much to introduce apparently. He had a case of amnesia and couldn’t even remember his own name. Squall hesitated at that, looking him over and actually feeling some pity, which was rare for him. But amnesia was something that he knew a lot about, and it was something he was risking every day by keeping his GFs junctioned to him. Would he be like that old man someday if enough time passed here? Would he forget Rinoa’s face eventually, or that he even had a home to get back to?

“I won’t,” Squall muttered, almost forgetting that Keimusho was there before he shook his head and turned back to the masked man. “Yeah, I heard some things before I left. I just took them for rumors,” he explained when Keimusho asked about the forest. “Supposed to be illusions of things that you fear to lure you off track. Powerful monsters. Guess I can believe the second one now.” He turned to consider the corpse of the marlboro, hesitating in his next words. He honestly hated travelling in a group. However much that he’d changed, he thought that he might always be a loner by nature. Still, he’d be stupid to wander off alone or to leave Keimusho to look after a liability by himself.

“I’m going to Torensten myself. Want to travel together? In case the rumors are true,” he reluctantly offered. At least the man didn't seem like much of a talker.

(...I hope I don't regret this.)

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Keimusho accepted Squall’s offer of traveling together, which wasn’t too surprising after what had just happened to them. The masked man referred to the dead monster as a “morbol” though, which was interesting. Were Marlboros referred to by a shortened name in Zephon? Before he could ask, Keimusho offered to scout ahead to see if there were anymore large monsters that they’d have to deal with. Squall nearly refused, but then he hesitated, deciding that he was too used to travelling with a loud and boisterous group now. Just because his friends weren’t so great at being quiet didn’t mean this man was. He’d seemed more than capable against the Marlboro, and he’d mentioned that stealth was one of his strong suits.

“Good luck,” Squall said, reluctantly deciding to trust him. He didn’t bother to tell him to be safe or anything, because that went without saying, and he really wasn’t one to talk for no reason. As Keimusho moved forward along the path, he made some kind of hand gesture and Squall had to blink when he seemed to disappear into the surrounding foliage. Maybe teaming up with him had been a good idea. Squall relied quite a bit on his sword, but Keimusho seemed to have a lot of support abilities that he’d never seen before. Too bad that drawing magic from humans was frowned upon—He was sort of curious at what all the man could do.

Suddenly aware that he’d been left alone with the amnesiac old man, Squall glanced at the man out of the corner of his eye, wondering what it was like to forget everything. Even in the depths of his memory loss with the GFs, he’d only forgotten the distant past. He’d never not known where he was or who the people around him were. “Hopefully someone in Torensten will know you,” he reluctantly volunteered. It wasn’t like him to offer pity that readily, but memory loss hit close to home for him.

Thankfully, Keimusho suddenly appeared in front of them, and Squall very nearly pulled his gunblade on him until he realized who it was. “You weren’t kidding about the stealth,” he muttered, frowning when he talked about the Ochu that lay ahead. “Yeah, I’ve fought those before too,” he said with a grimace. The monsters had been all over the forest close to Timber. “I can keep it busy. Just do what you’re gonna do before it dances at me.” The Ochu Dance wasn’t nearly as debilitating as Bad Breath, but he still didn’t want to get caught in it.

Shouldering the gunblade, Squall started to move forward, but he turned back around as an afterthought. “Better hurry though. Maybe I’ll finish it before you even show up,” he said with a faint smirk to show that he was mostly messing with him before he ducked under a tree branch and went ahead. As Keimusho had promised, an Ochu was hanging around close to the path about fifty feet away. He eyed the green monster as it lazily waved its two tentacles in the air. The creature almost looked like it was made from plants, but at least that made its weaknesses obvious.

“Fire,” he muttered, touching his forehead before sweeping out with his hand to briefly cause an explosion near its feet. The creature shrieked and retreated from its spot, which gave Squall a chance to run in and draw some magic from it, disappointed when it only gave him a few Silence spells. He already had plenty of those in stock. He had been hoping for something new from Zephon.

The creature recovered enough to try to bash Squall with its tentacles, and he dove over one to avoid the strike, bringing his gunblade down hard on the end of a tentacle before pulling the trigger. The resulting explosion ripped off the end of the tentacle, and Squall grimaced at the green goo that spurted out of the tip and landed on his shoes. Leaping back, he held the sword in front of him, ready to keep the monster's attention so Keimusho could pull out whatever sneak attack he was working on.

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