Kingdom Hearts 2 kicked ass. As far as I'm concerned it's only flaw was the ending, and not how it ended, but that it had an ending at all. I'm all psyked for KH3, but, in the mean time, I think there area few loose ends to tie up. Because some friendships are just meant to be. And some bonds just won't be broken.
"We were all going to get together and help him" The woman at the accessory shop said softly. "He had been having troubles, and we all said, 'tomorrow, we'll all get to the bottom of this'." She had a far off, distant look in her eyes. The two youngsters in front of her nodded solemnly.
"What happened to him?" the lady said in a firmer, almost panicked tone. "Where did he go?"
"We're not sure." Olette murmured. "We didn't even think about him until we found that picture. Then we started remembering him, and we couldn't remember why we ever forgot."
The lady handed the photo back over the counter, looking as if someone had stepped on her grave. Her eyes flitted over the faces of the teens that had brought this to her attention. She then looked further, across the street, to where the man who ran the item shop was also staring at the youngsters.
"Did…everyone…forget?" she asked.
"From what we've seen, yes." Pence looked glum. "We've been showing that picture around all morning, to our friends, to our classmates, to anyone who would have known him. A lot of people recognize him, but no one has seen him, or even thought about him, in a long time, and nobody knows why."
"We're going to try and hold some sort of meeting. We're trying to get all the people who were going to help him out before to attend. It'll probably be held in the sand-lot." Olette's big pleading eyes just cried out 'won't you come too?'
"Don't you think the two things are related?" the saleslady blurted out. "Don't you think it strange that the boy someone was harassing and stalking just disappeared like that?"
"We do at that, ma'am." Pence nodded.
"Do you have any ideas who's responsible?"
"Not really, no, just our own suspicions."
"And those are?"
Pence leaned in closer. "The thief. The thief that stole all the pictures. It was like he was looking for something." His voice lowered. "It went after the pictures first, and then it started after the real deal. And…" There was a dangerous edge to his words. "any one strong enough to steal the very words from our mouths might just be good enough to steal memories, too."
Wide-eyed and fearful, the woman took in what he was saying. "I'll be there. In the sand-lot. Just let me know when."
The Accessory Shop lady did indeed attend the meeting in the sandlot that evening, as well as the man from the items shop and the struggle promoter, and just about every school child between the ages of twelve and eighteen. The parents were all there, the employees from the train station, over a dozen teachers, and people who had been his neighbors or had just seen him every-so-often on the street also came. The lot was crowded to the brim, with more people than even the yearly struggle champion match would bring. People left work or closed up shop early, ditched part-time jobs (only to find their boss also in the crowds), and left their dinners growing cold on the table to come to the impromptu gathering. The meeting wasn't even supposed to have been held until at least tomorrow, but far too many remembered how this 'we'll fix it tomorrow' idea had been the reason they had forgotten in the first place.
Seifer, standing on one of the benches, called for quiet. "All right, first things first: when was the last time anyone saw him?"
Not surprisingly, it was the missing boy's friends, the same ones in the picture with him, that stepped up.
"It was just before summer vacation ended." Pence said, "He had been really glad to hear that everyone was going to pitch in and search around for whatever it was that had been stalking him and causing so much trouble. He ran out to get ice cream. He didn't come back. And none of us even noticed he was gone."
"Right, so that's what, five, six months now?"
The kids just nodded.
"Do we have any more proof? School records, finger prints, a fucking birth-certificate?"
"Why would we need any of that?" Someone asked.
"Stop stalling and lets get to the bottom of this!" the crowd didn't like Seifer's casual approach.
"Seriously people, we need anything at all on this guy. More pictures, newspaper clippings, his name on something, a lock of hair or a drop of blood, anything."
The crowd didn't see the importance.
"This isn't my idea of how to get this done, either." Seifer grumbled. "But we need to if we're ever going to figure out what happened. I tried to put in a missing person's report in today, and they wouldn't let me."
People were now listening with more respect.
"I went from the guy in the office to the chief of police to the friggin Mayor's office, but the fact is that there no record that this kid was ever in Twilight Town, or even existed in the first place.
The people in the crowd didn't think that was fair. Seifer ran his hand down his face, looking harassed. Like most everyone else, he was having trouble wrapping his brain around what was happening. Unfortunately, as head of the town disciplinary committee, he needed to at least act like he knew what he was doing.
"Okay, here's what we're going to do." He addressed the crowd. "Most of you are going to go home and turn everything upside-down. Gather up anything that might prove he was here. Something he might have touched that hasn't been touched or used since, something he wrote or signed. I know that a lot of pictures were stolen right before he disappeared." Seifer felt himself growing more confident as he spoke. This could work, and the people were hanging on his every word. "But a lot of them were returned, and there's no way those things could have gotten every photo of that guy. Somewhere, there has to be more, hidden in an album or a shoe box that no one's opened for years." Now he turned to some of the people of his gang, and some of the people in the front row. "The rest of us will start a search for any other clues. We'll go over what happened, and try and figure out where he went after people saw him last. Got it? Okay, now scram."
People filed out slowly, until Seifer had his boys start yelling at people to get a move on. "If yoose not on the search party, go home! We don't need you getting in the way."
Finally, the only people left were the ones that had decided to help with the search. Aside from Seifer's boys, there were those three brats, Setzer, some more of the struggle contestants, two police officers, the guy from the item shop, a scattering of teenagers who had had class with the missing kid, and the boy's former neighbors.
Hayner pulled out a large rolled up sheet of paper, and laid it out on a bench. Seifer was surprised to see that it was a gnarled map of the town.
"We made this over summer vacation, when the tunnels were closed. It has all our shortcuts, our meeting places, stuff like that." Hayner said. "A lot of it is copied from other maps we got at the library, so it's accurate down to the square meter."
Fuu whistled, but gave no other sign of approval.
"Those things would attack when no one was around to help him." He continued, and Seifer wondered if the boy was going to cry; there was a sharp pinch in his voice. "So I think we can eliminate the tram common and market street. People are there all the time, and if there was something there, it's long since been swept away."
Seifer nodded. "This'll be useful later on. It'll help us get inside his head, see where he might have run to, if he was trying to get away from something."
"Where should we look first?" Vivi asked. "The tunnels, or some of their hideouts?"
"Neither." Seifer said. "Back when we were all planning to search the town the first time, we all agreed that the most suspicious place was that old mansion beyond the woods." He pointed at the map, where the hole in the wall of the common was marked. "That still holds true. Even if the mansion itself has nothing to do with it, the woods are isolated, and few people ever go there. It's a good place to bury a body."
It was on the way to the woods that the neighbors handed over another clue.
"The house is empty." The woman was in her forties, and was trailed by her three oldest kids. "And as much as I try, I can't remember anyone but the boy ever living there. I don't remember him ever having parents, or anyone else. And it's a pretty big house, especially for just one person to live in."
"What all's inside?" Seifer asked.
"Not much." Pence said. "There's furniture and stuff, but most of his things are missing."
"We did find some of it, though." Olette said. "But it was all in boxes, like he had just moved in, or just bought it."
"You broke in?" the one of the cops asked.
"Nah. Roxas used to let us in through his window, cause of curfew and all. Broken latch, you see." Pence said.
"Did you find any proof of existence?"
"Found a whole lotta beer in the fridge." Hayner commented offhandedly.
"And Roxas didn't drink. Not just because he was too young. He didn't like how it messed up his skateboarding." Olette said.
"Anything else?" Seifer asked the neighbors.
"Kinda, yeah." One of the kids, a girl about fourteen spoke up. "Nobody remembers when he moved in, but we all remember when the Curtis family moved out. I used to play with their kids in the yard."
"Yeah." Her brother said. "And that was only about four or five years ago.
"That place was up for rent for a while." The oldest of the neighbor kids said. "At first there weren't any real permanent residents, just some guys who would crash there once in a while. That might explain all the beer in the fridge."
"Okay." Seifer said. "So the kid got in through the broken window, found nobody home, and just decided to make it his permanent place to crash. He's gotta be a runaway or something."
"No way." Pence said. "We were in that house loads of times. The place was totally different. More lived in, ya'know? Someone's must've moved all of Roxas' stuff out, and tried to replace it. That's why it looks like someone just moved in, 'cause the people weren't finished unpacking all the new stuff."
They had reached the hole in the wall.
"Okay." Said Seifer. "Now we split up. Fuu, go with the Wrights and go north. Vivi, take the officers and…Mr…Item Shop Guy…and go east. Rai, I want you and Setzer to round up these kids and go south. All of you, go slowly, and don't get lost. Look out for any little detail. If you find something, use your head. Don't touch anything, call in for help on the cellular first." Seifer indicated the cell phones they all had. "As for you three," Seifer rounded on the Brat Pack. "You're coming with me. We're going up ahead to that mansion."
Seifer waited until they were deep in the woods and far away from the other groups before he halted company and demanded answers.
"You're hiding something." He said, "And I want to know what it is."
The kids said nothing, which only strengthened his conviction.
"Well?" he said expectantly. "It's something to do with this case, then you'd better speak up. The more you cooperate, the better chance we have of finding your friend."
Olette started to say something, but decided against it. The group started walking again. Silence reigned, and the tree brats all had deep expressions on.
"So…" Siefer drew out. The tree looked at him as if they expected him to restate his question. "How do you expect to get past that big gate."
"Huh? Oh, that. Sora unlocked that a long time ago."
"Hayner!" Pence hissed.
"Ooops."
"Sora, eh? Who's Sora?"
"Sora's…a friend."
"Rea-lly? And is he here today?"
"No."
"And did he ever meet Roxas?"
"Not that we know of."
"Uh-huh. And where did you meet this 'Sora'.
"You remember Sora." Hayner said. "He was that guy that pwn'd us all in the struggle matches."
"Oh. Him. Where did he come from?"
"We're not really sure." Oletted said. "He just showed up one day."
"Uh-huh."
"Right before school started."
Seifer walked a few more steps, and then stopped in his tracks.
"Right before school started. As in, 'Right before Roxas disappeared?"
"No." Hayner said grimly. "As in 'the day after Roxas disappeared."
"He was looking for some friends of his." Olette explained as they poked around the gated area around the Mansion. "We're pretty sure he found them; we even got to meet Kairi. She was real nice, just like Sora was."
"Sora reminded us of someone." She blurted out. "We couldn't understand why. But I wish we had taken some pictures of him, because then we could have shown you all the resemblance."
"Do you think they were somehow related?" Seifer said in his usual baritone.
"Maybe. Maybe not." She got on her knees and poked around the hedges. "But Sora could go places none of the rest of us could. He was the kind of person you never doubted would find what he was looking for."
"You have any way of finding this guy?"
"No, not really. He always showed up unannounced. And he hasn't comeback in a long time."
"So he got what he was after, and now doesn't have a reason to travel." Seifer was getting a little frustrated. This was getting them nowhere. Another dead end, another string of interesting but useless facts.
A banging, clacking sound brought the two up from their evaluation of the shrubbery. Hayner had the front door by the handles, and was pulling vigorously to get them open. It wasn't working.
"Sora must have locked it behind him." Pence said. Hayner gave the barrier one last rattle, and threw his hands up in exasperation.
"Hey, don't worry. At least the gate is still open. If we need to look inside the mansion, we can just break the door down." Pence soothed.
Hayner wasn't impressed. Neither was Seifer, for that matter. A call from the gate got their attention. It was Setzer.
"Find anything?" the pretty-boy asked.
"Nada. But we should keep looking."
"Not today. It's getting late. These kids need to get home."
"No we don't. Our parents don't expect us home for hours." Olette protested politely.
Setzer ignored her. "We should be escorting them back to town."
The children protested this treatment, but Seifer got the hint. He herded the trio past the gates and into the woods. Silently, he was amazed that worked. Hayner, at the very least, would have pitched a fit, but then again, the squirt had been awfully silent during this whole ordeal. As they tromped the short distance back to town, Seifer cast long glances at Setzer, who seemed more interested in getting back to the dirt-free town than giving any hint as to what had abruptly canceled this excursion.
Selected portions of the other groups were waiting for them when they got to the hole in the wall.
"That should be everyone." One of the police officers said when he saw them. "We'll walk you home." He said to the brats.
By this time they had all gotten the hint that there was something going on that the adults weren't letting them in on. Scowling, Hayner let himself be led away by the officers and the family of neighbors. The other two kids seemed more concerned with whether Hayner was going to flip his lid than putting up a fight of their own.
As soon as they were out of sight, Seifer rounded on his gang. "And?" he demanded. "Why the change in plans?"
"The police are getting involved." Fuu said. "After all, if there is a dead body or a missing child, then they're the best equipped to find it."
I already have the next chapter written, I just need to see how this one goes over before I post it. And if anyone is wondering what's going on with my other fics, well, lets say that school got in the way. But it's summer, I graduate this afternoon (in about two hours, actually), and now there's nothing to do but sit back, relax, and try and pick up the threads of where I left off.