Breakfast in the cafeteria was always a busy time, since the room didn’t open until 9am and by that time most of the garden was awake and hungry. The women who staffed the cafeteria often had their work cut out for them preparing the many meals for the inhabitants of the Garden and dealing with students that didn’t understand that hot dogs were not available at breakfast time. The main problem they faced, however, was when a ‘conversation’ got out of hand.

A large crowd had gathered around one of the tables, a tale was being told by one of the more ‘creative’ students of Balamb Garden. The cafeteria staff would normally be in a state of panic if such a large group of students appeared, however they were used to the stimulating effect that Meadow Phantom’s stories seemed to have on her fellow students. After all, in the past week alone she had managed to grab the attention of the disciplinary committee, the library committee and the festival committee, without the need to cause a fight, burn a book or say bad things about the bespectacled leader of the festival committee. In a way, the cafeteria staff considered her an asset; she certainly brought them more business anyway!

“… And that is how I single-handedly saved the lives of Headmaster Leonhart, Headmistress Trepe and… uh… the other one!”

The story had finished and for a brief moment there was silence and yet again Meadow had told another successful story, until…

“Are you sure you’re telling the truth?” piped up a tall member of the disciplinary committee.

“Of course I am,” replied Meadow confidently, “If I wasn’t then why would I have this picture of the headmaster’s gunblade?”

The evidence of the photograph seemed to satisfy the crowd, though as usual there was an exception…

“How do we know that you didn’t just download that picture from Garden’s website?”

This question stumped her, and she fiddled with the ribbon on her uniform before saying anything else.

“Er… As much as I’d like to answer that question… I have to go and… um… Prepare for my SeeD exam. Which is too take place in… er… The quad, tomorrow morning at 0400 hours. Please feel free to make banners and cheer me on.”

And with that, Meadow made a swift exit to prevent any more questions from being asked of her. Luckily none of her classmates were silly enough to listen to her stories and thus none of them had been able to contradict her when she made the outrageous claims that she had saved Squall Leonhart’s live or had even met Quistis Trepe, there had also been nobody to tell those listening to her story not to turn up on the quad in the middle of the night to witness an exam that wasn’t scheduled for 4 o’clock in the morning.

Meadow used her story-telling to blow-off excessive steam, when she was particularly stressed her stories were more elaborate than usual. And the prospect of the SeeD exam at 11pm was a very scary thought indeed, causing the very ‘interesting’ story that she had just told to the others students. None of it was true of course, it was just Meadow’s way of getting people to respect and admire her. The main problem was that people did really respect her, she just didn’t realise that.