A small encounter.
It was near mid-night on the destiny islands and Riku was wide awake. He could feel something on the vary edges of his senses and was waiting for his parents to fall asleep do he could go find out what it was. As he listened, he heard his father finally fall asleep. He quietly got up and using all the stealth he had gained in his almost three year absence, he snuck out of the house. He stretched out his senses and followed the feeling. He found himself heading towards the Play Island and the keyhole. He started to move faster, heading towards the docks and found sora already there. Just before he was about to open his mouth to question him, a familiar voice rang out behind him.
"I take it you sensed it too?" he turned and saw Kairi.
"Yah we did. What ever it is, it feels… familiar." He responded.
"It feels almost like…I don't know what it feels like, but it doesn't feel like it wants to fight… it feels almost… sad." Sora said, placing a hand over his heart.
"Let's get to the Play Island and find out what it is that is causing this feeling." Riku said walking over to his boat. Sora and Kairi walked over to there boat in silence and followed him. As their boats skimmed over the water Riku realized that there was a light coming from the secret place. He looked to the others and saw that they had seen it too. They carefully pulled their boats to the shore. Without quite knowing why Riku pulled out Way to the dawn and gave Kairi her keyblade. He saw as Sora took the lead that he had Ultima out and in a ready position. As they approached the secret place he felt a weight of sorrow settle over his heart. It felt as though what ever was in the secret place was emitting an aura of pure sorrow and despair. He wondered what in the worlds could cause something to be so sad. As he fell in behind Kairi sora entered the secret place. They walked quietly and just before the bend in the path the stopped and poked their heads around the corner. They immediately saw the source of the light, a small fire had been lit in the center of the small open space. Next their gaze was drawn towards a pile of glinting fragments, which they were surprised to see, were glowing faintly on their own. As a fragment was picked up they saw that there was a person there, dressed plainly in blue jeans, a blue tee-shirt and black work boots. The figure looked up at them and plain hazel eyes shone from beneath a fringe of plain brown hair. Nothing about this person drew any attention to him, he was around their age. But they knew that he was what they had been sensing all night. Sora stepped into the firelight, but before he could say anything, the boy spoke.
"Oh, so this is where I came out… how do you do, Keyblade Master?" the voice had absolutely no emotion. Sora paused, then said, "you know me?"
"I know of you. I heard Xemnas rant about you and you resemble Roxas enough to be apparent to any who knew him" sora blinked, then asked, "were you a part of the organization? And what is that you're playing with?"
"No I wasn't a part of the Organization, I just passed through the world that never was a couple of times and they let me stay at the castle, maybe hoping I would stay there and join them. They weren't as pushy about having nobodies join them as one would think. And as for this," he indicated the shards, "well, it was a heart, mine to be exact, but it broke. It wasn't even in me when it broke." He sounded almost confused, "how dose a heart break if its not anywhere near the person who is sorrowing? And how can a nobody feel his heart break if he doesn't have one?" Kairi stepped over to crouch beside the shards of heart.
"What could cause such sorrow? I have never felt so much sadness and grief in my life…" she asked in a pained voice after examining the shattered heart.
"My world is dead." Was the response.
"You mean taken over by the heartless?" sora asked.
"No, it is dead. There is not even a heart left for the heartless to take. There is nothing left but ashes and fallout dust."
"Fallout dust?" Riku, this time, asked in confusion.
"I had forgotten, my planet was the only one foolish enough to dabble in nuclear power. Be glad that no other planet is that stupid. Fallout dust is radioactive dust that falls out of the sky after a nuclear bomb is dropped on an area. A nuclear bomb is a terrible weapon. It completely annihilates everything in its blast radius in a flash of pure light. And those it leaves behind are scared forever, in ways that do not show up for decades. And then is poisons the very earth it exploded on so that any life that lives there for centuries afterward is irreversibly twisted. My planet made these bombs and, after it survived the heartless, after you sealed the dark door, after everything, my planet used these weapons on it self. My planet no longer has a heart, for there are no longer any hearts left on it. A planet's heart is only as strong as the hearts of its people. Nothing is left on my home, there are no hearts left. I found out this recently, when I finally found my home again… there is nothing left for me. I have nothing left but a shattered heart and my memories. I have nothing left…." He trailed off looking into the distance beyond the walls of the cave. Sora and Riku felt their hearts clench. To find your heart and home again, only to find one shattered and the other lifeless… they could not comprehend how much it would hurt to find that all they had ever known and loved was destroyed. And that any chance of living any type of life had been destroyed with it… they would just…
"I… I have a… small request." The nobody spoke up after several moments in which only the fire made any noise. "C-could you… please… I… I can't…" to their surprise a lone tear made its way down the nobody's face.
"You know… I think I can peace this back together." Kairi said before the nobody could continue talking. Sora, Riku and the nobody stared at her in surprise. She continued "I would need all your help but I think it is doable." She stared hard at the nobody when he opened his mouth. He shut it quickly without saying anything. Then she spoke, and the words were meant for him and him alone.
"Would you really end your life? If you do, who will remember your people? Who will remember your family and friends? Right now you are the only one who knows what happened, and how to keep it from happening again…"seeing that her words were having little effect, she tried a different tactic, "do you really think, that your family, your friends, your precious people, would really want you to kill yourself? Do you truly believe that they would want you to do that?"
The nobody considered her words and said at length said "my sister would hit me on the head and say 'Live you idiot. If I see you up here anytime soon, I'll kick you back into your corpse, no matter what condition you leave it in. then you can go be undead and scare peoples hair white.' And she would too… I guess I should at least try to put my heart back together."
"Ok then! Riku sora come over here and help me, you too… errrrr…" Kairi trailed off hopefully.
"Mica. My name is Mica."
It took them the rest of the night to put the heart back together. It was, as Riku would comment later, the oddest thing any of them had ever done. They had started talking while trying to piece the broken heart back together and had found out a great deal about Mica it turned out that Mica had been a lot like Sora when he was Whole and his planet was alive. It was inevitable that Riku would be the one to bond with Mica. (When Riku's inner DiZ, also known as his common sense, had pointed out that there was no way to bond with a nobody, because they had no heart, his inner Sora had pointed out ' oh yah? Then what's that in your hand?' and settled the argument.) Just as the sun began to lighten the secret place, Mica's heart was completed. Before Mica took back his heart, he warned, "I am probably going to fall apart after this, just so you know."
"Don't worry, we will be here for you. I promise." Kairi said encouragingly. He placed his hand over his heart and it went back into him without fan fair. As predicted he proceeded to break down promptly, and as promised, Riku, Kairi, and Sora were there for him. That is how Wakka found them once he thought to look for the missing trio several hours later. When they had gotten back to the main land and the trio's parents had asked, in the tone of all parents that have found their children's beds empty in the morning, why they were there, Mica had answered for them. "They kept me from making a mistake that I would not live to regret." Given that he was still crying a bit, it was rather obvious what the mistake would have been. Nothing else was said afterwards, except to wonder where Mica had come from, and where the trio had met him. After Kairi had stared hard at several people who asked where Mica was from or about Mica's family, people got the hint and stopped asking about the new kids past. Aside from that Mica proceeded to settle down and get on with living. And he never once regretted it. Riku, how ever…. Well, lets just say that pink was not his color and leave the rest to the imagination.