"Hm hm hm… deer poop… hm hm hm…"

The orange haired girl continued walking down the sidewalk. It was awfully inactive on the streets for this particular time of day. Usually, there would be more than one car passing by, but it seemed like no one was interested in getting anywhere anytime soon today. She hummed her little song that would offend most others, chewing up a piece of jerky bit by bit as she went. She kept her parasol out and above her head, like all Yato did when the sun was out. Too much sun would tend to burn their skin, because unlike most humans, theirs was rather transparent. However, she wouldn't need it for that purpose for much longer for the remainder of that day.

It began to rain. Softly, but it still rained. Luckily, the Yato weren't stupid enough to try making their parasols JUST for keeping the sun off their skin. They had to fight with them as well, so they had to make them of sturdy materials, fabric and all. As it turns out, such material also had practical uses, such as now. The girl kept humming for a while before stopping. Something felt… wrong. She didn't know what it was. The rain seemed… sad. "Sad rain? That shouldn't happen…" she said aloud, having stopped eating the jerky.

She had heard the legends. Sometimes, tragedies in one reality affect others. She thought about it for a moment. [Did something happen? Something sad happened? I remember when I…]

She broke with her train of thought upon remembering her pet. She clenched a hand close to her chest, not wanting to remember it again. She loved that rabbit so much, yet her strength was too much for it. [Something or someone must have died!] she realized.

With this realization, she gasped and looked up to the grey heavens…

Kagura was slow to wake from her slumber on the mat. "Ngh… Minatsuki-san? Minatsuki-san?" she called out sleepily and with little regard as to what it was she was saying.

She slid the door open and stepped onto the main sitting area of the Odd Jobs apartment. Save for the soft sound of the rain, and the soft and barely audible breathing of Sadaharu, the apartment was dead silent. Gintoki wasn't even snoring. To make sure nothing was wrong, Kagura, slid open the door leading to Gintoki's room. It turned out the doors were thicker than she had always known them, because she was met by Gintoki's moderate snoring almost immediately, so she quickly shut the door. Kagura then walked to the front door and walked out, not bothering with her shoes at this time.

The rain felt really familiar. A soft rain. A sad rain, of sorts. The streets barely had any activity, as well. "So it happens here in Edo, too."

[But what could have happened?] she wondered to herself.

She looked up to the grey sky, hoping for an answer…

She could barely breathe properly. The stab wounds and few gunshot wounds certainly weren't helping her case. She kept a hand to her side to stop the bleeding of her side, where she was hit the hardest. Her vision blurred as the rain fell softly on the alley, washing her blood down it. She turned to her left and saw a figure at the end of the alley. It took a few steps before it stumbled into a garbage can, its resulting clangs echoing throughout the alley. Littered throughout were helmets and broken swords, to say nothing of the bodies of the owners. She never expected the man to bring a fighting force to bring him back.

The figure drew closer. It became more familiar. The hair, the black coat. The number XIII on his body. When he reached her, he collapsed onto his knees, dropping his gun onto the wet ground. "S-Saya…"

She struggled to acknowledge him. Train's yellow eyes looked into Saya's green ones, the light fading from them. Moving only caused more blood to come from her wounds, staining her yukata further. Still, she smiled at him. "Are you… okay?" she asked him, weakly coughing at the end.

"Yeah… he's gone. Somehow."

"That's good."

She wanted to reach over to him from the wall, but it caused her immense pain to do so. She couldn't use her free hand, her left, or the one she was using to hold her side. "It's good that… you're going to live."

"Huh?" Train said, his pupils contracting a little.

Saya slowly reached over to put her hand behind Train's head. At this point, pain didn't matter. It didn't seem like she was going to recover from this. She pulled his face to herself, letting her right hand drop from her side. The act covered half of his face in her blood, along with some of it getting in his hair. "You… you're special. I can see you as a free man. A cat that... follows no orders. Yet… the Black Cat is dead, in what I see," she said.

She let go, letting her hand drop and hit the wall behind her and Train pulled back slowly, trying to register what was going on. He didn't try to wipe the blood off. He was too dazed at the moment. "The Black Cat needs to die… but something has to take its place," she continued, slowly picking up Hades and handing to Train.

She was slow to do this, because she could feel the strength fading from her arms. Her legs. Her entire body was starting to go numb. "A stray cat."

Train inched closer to take the weapon from her. She placed it in his hands, pushing his hand a little after letting it go. Her hand fell onto a pool of her blood that had now formed on the ground. "For the Black Cat to die… and to come back a stray…" Train said slowly.

He had Hades in both hands now. It seemed to weigh so much more now. To him, perhaps it was her blood. She gave him a smile as her eyes closed. She slid down the wall to her left slowly, as if though setting down to rest. He watched her do so, not even blinking once. "Saya…"

"Don't… be bound… by chains. The only chains you keep… are… memories…"

After exhaling a silent breath, she stopped breathing. Train eyes went wide. He crawled on all fours to her, sitting himself up again to reach out and touch her face. The smile was gone. Some of the blood on his face had washed away. His hand trembled as he gasped at the realization he had made. She was gone.

Creed took her.

He could hear his voice in his head. She poisoned you, Train! But I'm saving you! I'm saving you from destruction! Chronos is the only place you can exist!

Train screamed into the heavens. He found that he couldn't move afterwards. He looked into the rainclouds, visions of Saya flowing into his mind…

"You know…" Kagura said, holding a cup of Rinoa's tea.

"Rinoa's tea doesn't suck?" Gintoki said. "I mean it. This is some good stuff."

"No… there was this woman I knew when I was younger. She was around before, while and after I had Sadaharu number one. She wore a really pretty yukata from what I remember."

"Do you remember her name?" Rinoa asked, setting the tea tray down and taking a seat next to Gintoki. "And why did you decide to bring this up?"

"All I remember is Minatsuki-san. I can't remember her first name. And… the rain… that's why I brought it up."

Gintoki finished off his tea with one sip. "Anything important about her we should know?"

Kagura looked up to think. "She was really nice to me. She was the one who taught me some things about rabbits, where they live in the wild around Earth, and was the one who suggested Sadaharu to me in the first place. The pestering of my parents, I did myself."

"And here comes the accent-less nostalgia," Gintoki said, putting a leg up and moving his head back and up.

"When I had Sadaharu number one, she would frequently go somewhere and buy a bag of bunny treats. I never tried them myself, obviously, but he absolutely loved them. When I lost Sadaharu, she did her best to make it better by finding a plush bunny," Kagura began, holding up said toy rabbit.

The rabbit was in surprisingly good condition. One would never suspect that she squeezed the poor thing as hard as she could when she had a nightmare. "One day, she left a note on my bedroom window. She wrote that she wouldn't be able to come back again, because she came to do something, and she got it done. She also wrote that she had a certain someone to visit, or that he would visit her. That was a really long time ago…"

"So that settles it. She's never coming back. Even so, this is before you moved to Edo, right?" Gintoki asked, picking his nose.

"Yeah, but I've lived on Earth longer than I've been in Edo! Oh, and one more thing… she mentioned being a Wandering Sweeper… maybe she was hired to clean up a pop idol's mess after her biggest concert?"

"I highly doubt that," Rinoa said.

"Hey, dudes…" Roman asked when entering the Grey Area. "Who discovered Sweeper's Field, and how'd it get its name?"

"That would be me," Vexen called out from the opposite side of the room. "I did not name the world, however. If memory serves, the name is derived from one of the world's chief occupations, bounty hunters."

"So what, they 'sweep' crime out of cities?" Roman said, making little sweeping motions with his hand.

"What else?" Xigbar asked. "It's 'Sweeper's Field', not 'Hunter's Field'."

"Eh, I can live with it."

No sign of Eve in the Area just yet. [Probably getting a leave for what happened yesterday,] Roman thought. [Odd, considering it was after the mission. She's not vulnerable to fat and sugar, is she?]

Roman walked over to Xion, who was looking out the window and at Kingdom Hearts. "Did you get to see Eve on your way here?" Roman asked.

Xion turned and said, "Yeah. She looked fine, but she confided herself to bed when I checked."

"Well, I hope that she' s up for another mission at some point."

"Agreed."

After talking to Xion, Roman decided to talk to the man in red. He still had his hands in his pockets, and his eyes were still obscured by his cap and hood. "…Yeah, store's open," he said.

"What now?"

"You got the money or other stuff, I got the good stuff."

Roman contemplated it for a second, but dismissed it, and walked over to Saix. His stare was as cold as ever, and pushing him out of Eve's room didn't seem to help it any. Without so much as a word, Roman was handed the mission specs of the day.

[Cold as always,] Roman thought. [Just wait, he's gonna ask me at some point when I'm here…]

But while Roman waited, he opened the mission specs. These were… interesting. It seemed like an entire list of missions to him. Roman made an O of his mouth as he scanned the paper. It didn't seem like there was any further detail to any of them. Another bout of curiosity was brought up when Roman's eyes went up to the top of the paper. "Weekly mission list?" he said aloud.

"The Organization is conducting an… experiment in which you get to be the main test subject," Saix said. "Unless the plan is dispelled for any reason, we are allowing members to visit other worlds freely at their leisure, for training and/or investigation of something of interest. Look at the mission at the top of the list."

Roman looked at just there. The mission so far was simply entitled Find Xaldin. [What, did the dude somehow get himself lost in a world?] Roman thought. [Emphasis on somehow.]

"High priority missions are marked accordingly," Saix continued. "Be sure to clear the list before the end of the week."

Of the four missions, Roman figured in his head that, if need be, he could dedicate a maximum of two days per mission to get them done before week's end. "One more note," Saix started again. "Be back by one o'clock AM, our timeframe, each night. That means bringing your watch."

[Hmph. A sort of curfew?] Roman thought.

He took a closer look at the mission list of the week. There was Find Xaldin, Collect Hearts, another Collect Hearts and Gather Emblems. [Oh no,] Roman thought when he saw the last mission listed. [I hate those stupid emblems. Who puts them where they tend to end up, anyway!]

Directly underneath each mission was the world in which the mission would take place. In order, Youkai Academy [Investigating that energy source again?], Sweeper's Field, Innocent Europe, and a new entry, Huffman Island.

Roman scanned over those two words again to make sure he wasn't seeing anything. Huffman Island. He opened his mouth to ask, but said nothing to Saix. He figured he'd leave it for last, and do the heart missions first, as they catered to his drive more than other mission types. He put the paper in his pocket and opened his mouth to tell Saix of his decision when the dark corridor caught his eye off to his right. On top of that, Saix had left, being sighted at the doorway before Roman turned to the corridor again. "Uh... yeah. Hey, Xion?"

She turned to face him. "You think it'd be okay if we work together on something?" Roman asked.

"Are you sure?" Xion asked back, walking to Roman. "Saix didn't say that we could complete missions together, did he?"

"Hell, I got no clue. Besides, what he doesn't know won't neccessarily hurt him, will it?"

Xion's gaze fell to the ground. "I guess not..."

"Then let's see," Roman said with a smile, entering the corridor.

Several white portals were now littered fairly close by in the dark space. It seemed that Saix wasn't kidding about letting members go where they want, since the white portals in the dark space led to other worlds. Looking closely, one could approximately tell which world each light portal led to, though where they end up specifically may vary. It took a little while for Roman and Xion to find the portal to Sweeper's Field, where Roman decided to head to open the week's missions. It was signified in the swirling light as a small patch of land with a sort of town or city on it. A hill taller than the rest of it had a disproportionally huge car on top with a black cat riding in it. This image is that of Sweeper's Field.

"Now, what kind of creator makes worlds like THAT on the outside?" Roman asked, as he and Xion stood in front of the portal.

"That's a good question. They look almost nothing like that in the worlds themselves."

"Oh, reality. Why must you fuck with us so?"

The scenery rushed past quickly. There was barely any time for one on top of the train to get a decent bearing of what it all was. If they could, they would see the brick buildings, some of which had the light coming out of the windows. On one of the cars, someone overhead would have seen a figure crouched on top of it. He wore blue, with a white shirt underneath it. He held his gun up near his face, the barrel pointed upwards, and closed his eyes for a moment before holstering the gun. He opened his eyes slowly and raised his head as well, to get a view of what was ahead. In all this, he also managed to bring a smile to his own face.

[My name is Train Heartnet,] he thought, slowly standing up and putting hands into his pockets. [I was the Black Cat. But he's dead now. What you're looking at is a stray cat. A stray that follows no orders, cleaning up the streets as a sweeper. I'm no SOLDIER... but I come pretty darn close, wouldn't you say?]

The train sped towards its destination, the former Black Cat standing tall with a smile on his face on top...

[Author's Notes]

- Yes. I did it. Train and Saya are the new Cloud and Zack, respectively. And I should remind you that there is no Midgar.

- Next chapter's the Collect Hearts mission in Sweeper's Field, "The Sweepers." I can tell you that my monkey main from Dissidia is a big asset in this world.