So is there a mountain in the garden or did they sneak out after hours?

[Cowboy Girl]

Interesting. It's hard to say with the facts presented, it wouldn't make sense for the fight to have occurred near the Fire Cavern. And yet there no visible mountainy areas inside Garden.

Unless Squall went early to train a little before hand and ran into Seifer. And the SeeD (probably Quistis), was going to show later but got the call from the infirmary. Or maybe it was Quistis who found them.

The doctor person only said that the injury wasn't serious and to come pick up her student. So Quistis seemed to already know.

[Avarice-ness]

Interesting. It's hard to say with the facts presented, it wouldn't make sense for the fight to have occurred near the Fire Cavern. And yet there no visible mountainy areas inside Garden.

Unless Squall went early to train a little before hand and ran into Seifer. And the SeeD (probably Quistis), was going to show later but got the call from the infirmary. Or maybe it was Quistis who found them.

The doctor person only said that the injury wasn't serious and to come pick up her student. So Quistis seemed to already know.

Dr. Kadowaki: "Quistis? Come get your student. Yes, yes...His
injury's not serious. It'll probably leave a scar.
......Right. Now please come by."

If Quistis was the one who brought him in to the doctor, the doctor wouldn't of stalled on saying her name. Also, by the looks of that she prolly asked a few questions.

When Quistis also comes up to get him, she sees who it is and shakes her head. And then makes this comment.

Quistis: "I knew it'd either be you or Seifer! Come on, let's go.
Today's the field exam."

Now from that, I'd say that she didn't know which student ended up being in the doctors to pick up. Granted just from the previous history of Squall and Seifer verbal and possibly physical scrapping, she most likely assumed that if someone was going to end up at the doctor it would have been one of them.

Dr. Kadowaki: "Why don't you take it easy in training? Next time you might not be so lucky."

The only thing I can't remember is the policy for training outside the school. Is there one?

Also, the fight couldn't have taken place -THAT- early in the morning. I only say this due to the fact of the MASS amount of people shown in the CG when Squall and Quistis are walking to the main part of the building. Not to mention, it's also perfectly sunny, so it's not like it's dawn or anything.

And due to the fact that it's clearly mass storms and almost all black clouds (if you look on the reflection of the lightning, not lighting up the black in the sky but only against the greyer clouds), there's no telling what time it actually is. It's unreasonable to say that it's like.. in the middle of night because the time between getting taken to the doctor and getting out of the doctor would be minimum and it's a bright sunny day when Quistis gets him.

Now if for some reason this was a perfectly normal day just with... epic clouds and blackness, there would also be no reason for Squall to be taking his GF test in the middle of the night.

So really, there's not enough evidence that shows they snuck out.
If anything there's more visual evidence pointing to the opening scene being just that, a dramatic opening scene.

Now, if everything was just an elobrate visual of what happened just to make an opening scene awesome, then it could be reasonable. Instead of showing something bland like the training center, they showed an awesome mountain scene, They were possibly in the training center right before closing, Squall was going to leave to get what ever SeeD needed to do his GF test, but Seifer jumped him and the epic battle NOT in the mountains begins. It would also take account for why Kado believes they were training and not sneaking off and for why he says he was about to go do his test when Seifer jumped him.

I highly doubt before the fight, Squalls sword falls from the sky and lands all epically into the ground.

So yeah, as for me, I don't believe the opening scene and everything around it was -ever- meant to be taken into any interpretation other than what it was: Two people fighting in an epic setting that leads into them getting hurt which leads into ingame showing the main character as the most hurt one.