"I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move."
-Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 18

This chapter-by-chapter plot summary is pretty rough, and maybe only 94% accurate because I tend to change little details and add many others as I write. It is not meant to be a substitute for the actual story, but a reference to refresh the memory of old readers who need to refresh their memories or new readers to catch up and get to the new stuff in case they feel that they have missed too much to get into the story (which is absolutely not true because this story is supposed to be 60 Settings long and I've only gotten 12 done so far).

Detailed Plot v 3.8 (Many pardons if the story deviates slightly):

Prologue: 1716 DAY 27, Tomb of the Unknown King Main Chamber

"O cruel one, bestow on me
Some taken of your sovereign sway,
Which I may follow earnestly,
And never from its precept stray.
If you would have me fade away
In silence, then account me dead,
But if you'd hear my ancient lady,
Then Love himself my cause shall plead.
My soul to contraries inured
Is made of wax and adamant,
And well prepared for Cupid's law.
Whether soft or hard my heart is yours,
To grave it leave to you I'll grant,
And to your will I'll bow with awe.
 -Cervantes

Don Quixote of La Mancha

Squall is hurting badly. He sees that Rinoa is about to kill him.

Twenty-seven days earlier:

Setting 01: 1220 DAY 0, Alcaud Plains around Balamb

"A savage race, that hoard, and sleep, and feed... know not me.
I cannot rest from travel."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 5

PuPu gets killed while wandering towards Balamb Garden.

Setting 02: 1427 DAY 1, Winhill Cemetery

"This is my son... When I am gone. He works his work, I mine."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 33

Laguna chats with Raine and lets her know that their son is a success. He has totally misjudged Squall as being a person who doesn't need the opinions of others. Laguna himself is not a very good father. He envisions his proposal to Raine. Ellone, Kiros, and Ward arrive.

Setting 03: 1458 DAY 1, Winhill Outskirts

"Down stage he strode some paces,
grave, tall in affliction, his long arms outheld.
Hoarsely the apple of his throat hoarsed softly.
Softly he sang to a dusty seascape there: A Last Farewell.
A headland, a ship, a sail upon the billows.
Farewell. A lovely girl, her veil awave
upon the wind upon the headland, wind around her."
 -Joyce, James

Ulysses II

Laguna has decided to stay in Winhill while Ellone decides to go back to Esthar accompanied by Ward and Kiros. By chance they meet on their way the current owner of Raine's house is infected by some fatal respiratory disease and collapses in a seizure. It requires more than a Curaga because it had been carried for a long time and only the Esthar medical technology could surgically cure her ailment. Ellone gives up her seat while Kiros and Ward head on first. Ellone waits by herself for the next ship, and seeing soon after a light coming in her direction from the sky, stand up eagerly to board it.

Setting 04: 1533 DAY 1, Great Salt Lake Perimeter

"It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed,
when that little wisdom is its own."
 -W. R. Inge

Strange beings in their own language discuss where to land their ships and pick this place that look like its using a lot of power. It is a good place because it is invisible, and they are surprised at meeting such advanced a civilization. One still sneers at the primitiveness though. The other asks for the objective again, and the latter tells him that they’re here to find their last comrade who never returned from a planetary sampling assignment. The sampling assignment has been going on to find out every piece of knowledge that this planet had, and had been completed by small individual crafts till now, because it is an elevated state of danger. Ellone and Caraway (as we shall find out) are being tested. They talk about taking another native to ransom back their comrade but decide instead to send another one of their party to go undercover and confirm their worst suspicions, that their comrade is dead.

Setting 05: 2045 DAY 1, Balamb Garden Ballroom

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end.
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!"
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 22

At the party, Cid assigns the position of Headmaster of the new Trabia Garden to Squall. Quistis is to go along as his aide and Selphie will head the reconstruction crew. Dr. Kadowaki will go along with them. Squall receives a brief communication with Laguna but their father-son talk doesn’t get anywhere. Irvine and Zell are dispatched to investigate atmospheric phenomena along the four fields spread over the world. Mina will be leaving for Galbadia the next morning on a campaign to save all animals in the wild from the poisonous green Malboro. Rinoa will stay at Balamb Garden for a week or two until things are settled there before going to see Squall. Angelo will tag along with her.

11 days later:

Setting 06: 1730 DAY 12, Trabia Heath Peninsula Island

"’But now reach out your hand; open my eyes.’
And yet I did not open them for him;
And it was courtesy to show him rudeness."
 -Dante Alighieri

Inferno XXXIII

Zell and Irvine have been running around all the sites and are about to close in on the one closest to Trabia. They are pretty pissed at being sent on what seemed like a good mission but didn’t turn out to be too fun. They didn’t even stop in Winhill to rest like they planned because they were behind schedule. The got delayed in the negotiations because they couldn’t speak Shumi. They take turns blaming each other for it. They don’t see anything at the sites, not looking at the ground to see the UFO marks, but they do talk to some people. A cow is missing from Winhill Bluffs, but that is all they find unusual. They lose the Ragnarok’s keys.

Two days later:

Setting 07: 1417 DAY 15, Nova Trabia Public Basketball Courts

"I am become a name;
for always roaming with a hungry heart
much have I seen and known,- cities of men
and drunk delight of battle with my peers."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 11

Worried about the growing complaints about rampant theft in the new Garden, Quistis is looking for Squall whom she can't find in any of his usual hiding places, of which the basketball courts was his favorite. Some students are playing there on their off time from the Garden and start to hit on her, thinking she's Rinoa, while Squall's not there. A mysterious stranger saves her from the players but is exposed as the cause for all the thefts. She is surprised to find Irvine at the Trabia basketball courts with Zell taunting him because he has missed the last ten shots from the same place. They stopped by after checking their fourth and last site. Quistis remark that Alexander GF took off for vacation. As soon as Quistis leaves, Irvine pulls out his Tonberry King to block shots and Jumbo Cactuar to rebound. Zell says it isn’t too smart an idea, and that it wasn’t fair because he didn’t have any GFs on him.

Setting 08: 1820 DAY 15, Trabia Coast-bordering Cliffs

"All times I have enjoy’d
greatly, have suffer’d greatly; both with those
that loved me, and alone."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 7

Squall is sitting on the cliff with his legs hanging over it, pondering to himself. He is in low spirits because he is still steamed at Rinoa after two weeks and will convince himself that she is no good for him. He calls Ifrit, Diablos, Cerberus and Doomtrain out to talk about Garden and Rinoa. Cereberus converses with three mouths, Diablos offers to kill Rinoa, Ifrit will light his cigarette, and Doomtrain will say that it is bad for him. Cereberus smells Quistis coming so Squall dismisses them.

Setting 09: 1856 DAY 15, Balamb Garden Subsidiary Corridor 2F

"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
it may be we shall touch the Happy Isles."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 62

Rinoa is getting abused by the girls who hate her at Balamb Garden. She has an eating disorder. She decides Squall has had enough time to receive her and packs her bags and lifts Squall’s keys from his room to the cars in the Garden parking lot. En route, she is taken prisoner.

Setting 10: 1910 DAY 15, Directly over Esthar City

"Ah, Genoese, a people strange to every
constraint of custom, full of all corruption,
why have you net been driven from the world?"
 -Dante Alighieri

Inferno XXXIII

The strange beings are now talking and have almost confirmed their suspicions that mankind is inherently bad and that the SeeD commander was perfectly capable and in some way ergo responsible for the death of one of their comrades. The more assertive alien tells that he already sent their undercover agent to carry out a more active role, and having completed the mission, was now transferred to the second phase of their revenge. The less aggressive alien is displeased for having been left out of the loop, remind the first that in the future they should collaborate as the rules stated, and that they were not out for revenge just yet. The mission should still be a study to ascertain the truth behind their companion’s death. The less aggressive alien asks how the two test subjects are doing (Ellone and Caraway) and the response is the tests are doing well.

Setting 11: 2018 DAY 15, Trabia Coast-bordering Cliffs

"It little profits... an idle king,
by this still hearth, among these barren crags."
 -Tennyson, Alfred, Lord

Ulysses 1

Quistis finds Squall at sunset by himself sitting on the edge of Trabia's cliff looking out onto the ocean shore below him. She notes that Trabia is usually really cool but the summer evenings are splendid. He’s wearing some weird orange and back t-shirt. Quistis didn't know when Squall started wearing shorts or smoking as he lights a small green piece of a Malboro tentacle, which she tells him isn't too healthy. He doesn't care and there was no proof of that. She notes that his legs are admirably tanned even though they probably weren't used to seeing the sun. She mentions the thief that just saved her and how she doesn't feel like she can capture him even though he is a criminal. She tries to get him to talk about their feelings for each other before she is taken completely by Squall. When she realizes what she was about to do, she leaves back towards the Garden in a hurry. Squall suddenly hears a cry for help down below. Asking Leviathan GF to save the girl below would take way too long. He throws away the cigarette, quickly gets Ifrit to Mad Rush him for inspiration, and makes a daring leap off the cliff and lands in the water just in time to save a girl with ocean blue hair from some water monster.

Setting 12: 2039 DAY 15, Just beyond Winhill Cemetery

"Folly, thou conquerest, and I must yield!
Against stupidity the very god
Themselves contend in vain. Exalted reason,
Resplendent daughter of the head divine,
Wise foundress of the system of the world,
Guide of the stars, who are thou then, if thou,
Bound to the tail of folly's uncurb'd steed,
Must, vainly shrieking, with the drunken crowd,
Eyes open, plunge down headlong in the abyss."
 -Johann Christian Friedrich von Schiller

Laguna, having secured one end of a rope on a tree trunk and having wrapped the other end around his hand, jumps down a crevice beyond the graveyard to save the cat belonging to the owner of the bar, who had fallen in. He wished he had equipped a GF so he could cast a Float spell on himself. Kiros and Ward had come back after two weeks of not hearing from Laguna or Ellone. They arrived just as Laguna was responding to a call for help about the cat, so they were unable to question him in depth about the whereabouts of Ellone and because of serious blackout issues of Esthar power grids that started since their initial departure from Winhill. Laguna is taking an exceptionally long time so they head into town and at the bar, but en route meet multi-colored hair Jeremy Chapter, childhood friend of Selphie from Trabia and now doing an sociology study in various areas of the world. Stiltzkin, the travelling moogle in FF9 is kicking the side of Jeremy’s shoes. He had just gotten into town that day, but would be leaving to Trabia Garden in a bit. Jeremy is doing two things at once; writing a novel about siblings with identity crises that Kiros finds particularly interesting, and cursing his differential equations exam to come (former student of the Trabia Academy, now blown to bits so he’s trying a global online course). In Jeremy’s story, the two were separated from birth and while one has now stepped out of his place, the other fills it in for him. Kiros and Ward head back, find that Laguna still isn’t done, so they go back and talk to Jeremy. Jeremy now reveals that he arrived from Galbadia and had documented a fascinating anti-Malboro campaign. He’d also met a woman named Mina there. Jeremy is looking for 400 Cactus Thorns, a Rosetta Stone, and Eden to refine them into 4 ‘Hundred Needles.’ Finally Kiros and Ward go back and Laguna is done. After pulling himself up and letting the cat go, Laguna loses his footing before the neighbors can grab him and drops back into the gorge and knocks himself out.

Setting 13: 2041 DAY 15, Nova Trabia Garden Officer’s Lounge 1F

"Captaining this venture was a woman."
 -Vergil

Aeneid II

In the Trabia Garden lounge, Selphie gets trapped in the sofa before she is helped out by a student. She goes through the daily reports, noting the good work of a short recruit from Balamb named Dante. She also notes that Irvine has been relieved of all court privileges because his Jumbo Cactuar popped all the balls and sent all the players to the infirmary and Tonberry chopped three of the backboards into pieces before Irvine could call him back. In order to pay for the damages, Irvine suggests that they split up to increase their collective pay six fold and makes Selphie mad. She slaps him, then furiously kisses him for being jealous, and recovering, slaps him again and then leaves. After asking Zell if that was a good sign or a bad sign, Zell slaps him too just for fun, and the two end up in wrestling on the floor. A nervous Quistis, having rushed back into the Garden bumps into Selphie who is also red. Quistis, shaking, wants some coffee so they both walk back into the lounge and seeing the two men wrestling, excuse themselves, upon which the two break up instantly. Irvine rushes after them while a profane Zell storms off towards the Garden exit by himself.

Setting 14: 2059 DAY 15, Archaeological Excavation Site on the Outskirts of Nova Trabia

"’Now you must cast aside your laziness,’
my master said, ‘for he who rests on down
or under covers cannot come to fame’."
 -Dante

Inferno XXIV

Seifer pushes Rajin out of the way and Fujin trips Rajin. They are busy pulling off some scheme in a locked room where the church group outside had thought they were trying to purify themselves. Titanus GF is called out to help them dig. He remembers what the sorceress had done to seduce him; she gave him a trial that he could not hope to pass. He catches Rajin asleep and prepares to whack him to wake him up.

Setting 15: 2110 DAY 15, Deling City, Caraway’s Mansion 2F (Master Bedroom)

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
what is essential is invisible to the eye.
 -Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Rinoa snaps awake and finds herself back in Caraway's mansion where her father will arrange her marriage to Squall with President Laguna over the phone because he sees many prospects in him. Angelo has been placed in a kennel outside the house because he can't keep quiet. Rinoa is visited by two of her friends who tell her that she was brought into the house by a midget whom they have mistaken to be her new boyfriend. Rinoa has no clue what they are talking about, and she is worried because her father isn't acting like himself.

Setting 16: 2128 DAY 15, Trabia Coast-bordering Forests

"It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts,
than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence."
 -Gandhi

No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking. No peeking.

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