Chapter 1: Sunset Isle
A scattered dream
that's like a far off memory.
A far off memory
that's like a scattered dream.
I want to line the pieces up-
yours and mine...
Darkness. Cold and heavy, all-encompassing. With terrifying efficiency, it swallowed all it touched, shrouding a barren shoreline and blackening its sea to ink, camouflaging the lurking shadows of broken dreams, quashed hopes and promises unkept. Suspended low in the bleak and starless sky, the round, pale moon fought a losing battle to banish the gloom, its blemished profile pierced by sharp, jagged rocks that curved from the water and sand. The harsh formations framed the view taken in by the lone figure seated before the long pulls of the surf. They were still and silent as their presence bubbled about their person, sloughing off all noise, energy… anything that suggested life, the silver bangles that hung from the neckline of their dark, hooded cloak not even daring to utter a sound. It pooled at their feet in molted layers, a frothing tarn of decay that polluted the air and clouded the senses.
To their left, a disturbance in the empty space overpowered the hum of the lapping waves. A form far smaller than their own stepped out of the swirling void that had materialized, cocooned in the same attire, to be sure, yet bearing it with such submission that it could pass as entirely different. Their metal ornaments did not hesitate to chime through the frigid night.
The seated individual watched as they approached. "You were not expected." The voice that came from within the faceless shadow under the hood was chilling, and syrupy-thick with inherent superiority. "You know, you are not entitled to any information. However, you did come all this way. I suppose I could tell you something..."
The smaller someone simply stared.
The voice spoke again, paying no heed to the one-sided aspect of the conversation. "I have seen him. You look alike in many ways."
"Who are you?" A calm tone came for his accompaniment.
"That is not your concern," he told them succinctly. "My name is not important anyway. But what about you, your true name? Can you recall?"
"My true name... It's..."
"Hey!"
"Aren't you guys forgetting about me?"
"If there are any other worlds out there, why did we end up on this one?"
"This world has been connected."
"Wh-who's there?"
"Tied to the darkness..."
"Sora, don't ever change."
"The door has opened..."
"Nnng... Uhh..."
Sheets, starved for starch and nearly threadbare, twisted and restrained Maxx's clammy limbs as she shifted restlessly in her bed, her spasms in perfect syncopation with the cryptic voices her dreams towed through her subconscious. She swam in them, fighting their battering current with futile flailing and objective mutterings suppressed by an unawakened state, yet all too soon, their joyride stirred her from troubled but nonetheless required sleep. With a weighted and grainy burden, her cobalt eyes slowly opened, cracked windows of regret and protest as they adjusted to the uncomfortable light of morning, staring uncomprehendingly along her sun-streaked ceiling.
Her shoulders twitched with a breath shot from her lips as she came to terms with her unwanted immigration into the land of the living. "Another dream..." she wearied. Her hand felt heavier than she remembered it to be as she lifted it, tangling her fingers into her straw-blonde hair. "...with him again."
With all the finesse of a reverie soon to be forgotten, the thought slipped away as the sound of the morning bells at the harbor station reached her, their tangible existence jarring her into full reality. Tiredly, she rose and slid to her knees, the flopping of her body weight acting as the only force behind her hand to push open the window over her bed. The orange glow of the adolescent day's sun warmed her face as her gaze swept out and over the sights of the waking town, Sunset Isle. Smoke threaded from tiny chimneys upon the rooftops, drifting through lines of freshly-laundered sheets airing in the morning breeze. Beyond the buildings of town, the violet stretch of the sea skewed across the horizon, lending finality to the view that was as scheduled and daily rehearsed as her morning tea. She sighed, resting her chin on her arm as she melted into her window sill, spreading across it like candle wax. Soon (yet never soon enough, it seemed) the children of the isle would bid farewell to the school year and welcome the summer holiday in its stead. On its maiden day, like fish to spawning grounds, decades of ingrained tradition would have the scant, tightly knit populous of Sunset Isle making the journey to the seaside, called by the setting of the burning sun. Darkness would fall, and with annual clockwork accuracy, the dusk blossoms would open for the first time.
The flowers, arm in arm with their accompanying stems and leaves, blanketed any crack or crevice they could reach, but seemed to favor being near the ocean. Their creeping vines, rich and green, covered the stonework seawall, driftwood log piles and lavarock formations that ornamented the coastline. Pale buds would appear in late spring, and the first day of summer holidays each would bloom a small, deep purple flower at sunset. When the dusk overpowered the daylight, the blossoms would glow through the night, turning the beach into a sea of stars, and when morning came, they would close until evening returned.
Taking in the captivating display on the first night was a yearly, communal event, and far more than a simple spectacle. An entire festival was held just for the one special occasion. Vendors would take up shop, peddling wares, eatables and entertainments of all one could imagine. Girls and ladies spent copious weeks planning their attire and appearance, settling only for the best of their summer wear and accessories. A special network of paper lanterns was hung over the grounds, the entirety dimmed with the flick of one switch, lest their light obstruct the ethereal glow of the flowers.
Maxx and her friends had been planning their night since the start of spring term, and as it grew ever closer, excitement began to churn in her core.
"Six more days," she told herself. "Better change into my uniform."
- The 1st Day -
Dressed and on her way, Maxx dashed recklessly down the worn streets, silently praying to a god of leniency she could only hope existed that she'd get to school before the last bell. Her half-ironed suit jacket flapped at her hips with each strike of her feet to the road, and her improperly knotted tie made a point to cuff her face each time she vaulted an obstacle in her path. The crowds of weary workers she weaved carelessly through only paid her their slightest recognitions when she jostled them, and even the calloused wives of fishermen ignored her smacking of their hanging wooden stall signs, resigned to the girl's rituals and figuring their attentions better placed into setting their husbands' hauls onto beds of ice.
Maxx swept away the dew that had sprinkled from the placards onto her shoulders, and despite her now inevitable tardiness, she skidded to a stop in front of an open shop window, the soles of her outdoor school shoes squealing, and poked her head through the frame, looking side to side.
"Cheni!" she called.
Summoned by her call, a young woman emerged from the back room, scrubbing her hands on a worn dish towel. "Sorry Maxx," she said.
"S'okay," she assured with a nod. "Just the usual, please. Hurry if you can. I'm going to be late…"
Tucking back the pink and black hair that had freed itself from her clip, Cheni discarded her cloth and reached into a waist-high freezer that claimed most of the shop's inner real estate, stuffed to the brim with tiny white boxes. Plucking up the closest one, she handed it to her jittery customer.
"Thanks," she said, yanking the carton from her. As she started off down the street once more, Cheni stuck her head out the shop window.
"Hey!" she shouted after her. "Are you going to pay for tomorrow's on your way home?"
Maxx turned, her strides morphing into tiptoe bounds, and gestured to the wooden sword hilt protruding from behind her shoulder. "I have practice!" she yelled back. She had already removed her daily sea salt ice cream from its box, and was gumming it intently. "I'll pay tomorrow!"
Focused on her unorthodox breakfast, she continued her hurried backward pace, only beginning to turn when she reached a street corner she had to navigate, all the while keeping her head down and eyes trained on her meal.
Of course, her negligence did not go unrewarded. The action was instantly regretted as she collided straight into another being, sending them both for a painful encounter with the pavement.
Behind her, she heard her victim growl. "Oi…"
Maxx groaned at the unmistakable voice, and her panic only doubled when she caught sight of the long, red hair that had rested on her shoulder. She leapt swiftly to her feet, as did the person who she had slammed into.
The tall redhead regarded her, the sinews of his lithe, gangling arms flexing as he flung his uniform coat over his shoulder, hooked haphazardly to the very tips of his fingers. "Yo Maxx," he addressed her, his disposition calm and unruffled. "What's the big idea?"
Maxx could only glare at the contrast of his impassivity to her clear and obvious anxiety. Her companion, Reno, was just as late as she was, and his ability to not sweat socially indoctrinated stresses was one she both envied and despised. "Back off, Reno," she bit out. In her head, the retort had sounded demanding and stern, yet it arose strained and bitter, and she flicked her hand behind her head and grasped her sword handle in a feeble attempt to regain some of her confidence. Or more accurately, if she was being honest with herself, fake it. It was the best she could hope for, being as poor at handling tarnished histories as she was.
Her peer simply smirked. "Hey, you ran into me. I should be the one who feels vulnerable."
There he went again, perfectly content to ignore the fiduciary implications of societal contracts. One of the blessings afforded by small town living was a lack of options… for anything. If, for example, a gang of cohorts was at constant odds with your own, the number of schools to choose from being a solid one made transferring away from your antagonists all but impossible. You dealt, as best or, in Maxx's case, as below par as you could.
"If I wasn't late, Reno, I'd gladly wiped that smug look off your face," she threatened.
The boy maintained his lofty temperament in spite of the warning, and even exacerbated it with a flamboyant shrug.
As unflappable as he was, with Reno, Maxx had more than a petty rivalry on her side, and with a little effort she could typically get under his skin as far as he got under her own, but today it seemed he was particularly collected. That, or she was too drained, too exhausted to be as efficient as usual. Whatever the case, she ceded, settled for making a sour face at him and, resisting the desire to go against her claim, charged off down the street.
Since the premiere of her nightly dreams, Maxx's days had passed as a string of dull, hazy blurs, and aside from her morning encounter, the start of her current week had been no exception. She knew full well she'd absorbed nothing from her classes that day as she coasted at a slow pace from the school through the twisting streets. The sun was a fair fraction into its descent, and the town had reached the quiet, still part of the day when the blue collar work force had retired to their homes for early suppers with their families, but had not yet ventured out on their gallivanting to the pubs. The smattering of bodies that occupied the roads consisted mainly of the high school student body, a uniformed mass that veined and thinned as each went their separate ways. Having stayed late for her exercises, Maxx was one of the collective of stragglers, the homogeny of their unvaried appearance broken only by the peppering of shopkeeps sweeping their steps and aged couples on return trips from the market.
The fluid silence granted the girl time where her thoughts were shoved to her mind's forefront; something that she had mixed feelings about. Of the two options she had, to lose herself in pondering them, or not to dwell on them and simply hope they went away, she couldn't determine which was the better choice. Neither sounded appealing, but there was no middle ground. The path was a fork in front her, and the approaching wall at her back was closing in fast.
The first time she'd had the dream, months ago, she hadn't thought anything of it. The only unusual aspect was how vividly she remembered it, as if the events she saw were actually happening. Not a dream at all, but rather a grand production playing out before her with a set that consumed the world and actors that had executed their parts for lifetimes. Even when the performance resumed in the second act the following night, she awoke perplexed, but certainly not concerned. It took a week of return trips to the dream theater before the worry set in.
And of course, it couldn't be as simple as taking in the same recital over and over. That was assessable, and gave the opportunity for reflection. Instead, Maxx was graced with a new routine each visit. A different story, with different events at different times, bombarding her with new information to consume and digest. After months of deposits, the pile had grown to far more than her tiny self could absorb, and it both ached in her head and ulcered in her gut.
The only constant she had come to count on was the players, diligently filling their roles each and every night. Had they not been tarnished by being part of the dreams that were the new damper on her contentment, Maxx may have considered them friends. Without a doubt, she knew them well enough. Joined by their plethora of friends that had remained nameless thus far, there was Sora, with his infinite cheer and optimism and the blinding smile to match, joined at the hip with his anthropomorphic teammates Donald and Goofy. There was Kairi; compassion personified, gentleness incarnate. The unfairly adorable girl was one whose presence you could never feel bad in, and drew in just as much love and caring as she gave out.
And then there was Riku… The show lead, Maxx guessed, for his face was the only one that had made an appearance in every single dream, he and his strange tinsel hair and iridescent green eyes that only gave the illusion of depth. They were, in actuality, a most efficient mask. His expression never gave anything away, and because of this she didn't know what to make of him. She couldn't put a finger on his motives either. At one moment he'd seem selfless, willing to go to a literal hell and back to keep those important to him away from harm, then in another totally engrossed in nothing but his own gain, power-mad and merciless. On a dime he could turn from astute and philosophical, conjuring the most awe-inspiring possibilities, to hotheaded and downright egotistical. If he were more than an induced figment created by her obviously troubled mind, a real flesh and blood person who she met one day face to face, Maxx wasn't sure if it would be more fitting to swap a bow with him, shake his hand, or deck him in the jaw. The poles of his personality were too stark, too varied…
A flash of crimson snapped Maxx from the hypnosis she hadn't realized she'd fallen into, and she found her feet had carried her to her destination, a narrow alleyway that led to a metal gate, partially concealed by the tattered curtain that had provided the aforementioned red flicker. The gate's hinges groaned as she swung it aside, revealing the room behind it. The small space was caged in smooth walls of rosy brick and a floor of weatherworn parquets with an inset of dusty ochre gravel, while a grated iron ceiling that let the sun's orange rays pour in from above wallpapered the chamber in a grid of shadows. Butted against the walls and serving as seating was an assortment of wooden shipping crates stamped with identifiers in various inks, an old abandoned sofa upholstered in faded olive corduroy that was hemorrhaging its stuffing, and a pilfered cracker barrel from the dive down the street. A wood-burning stove that sat nestled in the corner provided heat during Sunset Isle's long and icy winters, its crackling strain harmonized by the sound of docking ships and screeching gulls that constantly droned in the background.
This was where she and her friends would convene daily after school and on Sundays, a meeting place they had uncreatively named 'The Usual Spot'.
The rendezvous point had not been empty when Maxx arrived. In a far corner of the room atop one of the crates knelt a girl, her back turned as she scrawled long, looping strokes onto the wall with a chunky nub of white chalk. The familiar tune she hummed, gentle and sweet, drew a placid smile over Maxx's face.
"Hey Nyaru," she greeted, admiring her friend's latest mural as she plopped her schoolbag down onto the couch.
The girl looked to her, beaming fairly. A year younger than Maxx, Nyaru had always been considered one of Sunset Isle's most priceless visions, and as the afternoon light cast a halation over her cascades of bronze hair and glimmered in her ice blue eyes, it wasn't hard to see why.
So pretty she was, in fact, that Maxx sometimes couldn't even comprehend how they became friends in the first place. She was Nyaru's polar opposite. Her friend was lovely, well-mannered, and always very proper, while she exemplified none of those things. Maxx was rough and tumble, all too casual, and crassly direct. Even her appearance contrasted Nyaru's stunning presence. Her blonde hair was choppy and frazzled, and despite many efforts, it would never lay flat. The angles of her face were sharp and jarring, from her cheekbones to her nose, flat as a board from bridge to tip. Her shoulders and arms had clearly defined tone from long hours of activity, while obvious tendons protruded from her thin neck and wrists. She had little, if any, figure. Her hips were narrow, nearly a straight line from her flat chest to her short, curveless legs. The only hint of femininity she displayed was her pointed navy eyes, surrounded by long lashes, dark and feathered.
"Is Corr here yet?" she asked her striking companion as she pulled a change of clothes out of her bag.
"Yes, he is," Nyaru replied, the corners of her lips expanding her radiant smile.
Maxx struggled to keep her armful of clothes from falling to the ground as she headed to a curtained alcove to change out of her uniform. "Oh yeah? Where's he hiding?"
"He's-" Nyaru cut herself off as her friend yanked open the ugly brown and orange drape, where someone was just beginning to poke their head through the hole of their shirt. "…changing," she finished too late.
Maxx exclaimed, shielding her gaze with her free hand as she tried to suppress a snicker. "Sorry Corr…"
Nyaru chuckled and averted her eyes as her fellow first-year finished pulling on his shirt and bowled his own deep ocean-green hues at Maxx's embarrassment. Taking up his scuffed suede walking shoes, he stood aside to let her change.
"Shuurei should be here soon," he noted, to no one in particular, shuffling a hand through his dirty blonde and sparsely highlighted crew cut.
On cue with his mention of her name, a girl even younger than himself waltzed in. "Hey all," she greeted, her long black ponytail tangling into the shoulder strap of the hefty camera slung across her chest.
"Speak of the devil," Corr grinned.
With a mock pout, she proclaimed, "Am not," and aware of the routine, waved to Nyaru and greeted Maxx through the curtain.
Maxx completed her outfit swap with a tap of her toe to the ground to properly adjust her left sneaker, and the others followed her lead as she procured a seat on the crate closest to the exit. Shuurei plunked down on the stouter case next to her, while Nyaru sank into the chesterfield and Corr claimed the barrel.
As her friends covered their days to one another, Maxx silently sat on her box, staring down at her hands, the faintest snippets of Nyaru's first freshman exam, Shuurei's looking forward to retiring her middle school uniform as she was fitted for her high school one, and Corr's application for a summer job at the cannery barely penetrating her distraction. Her dreams still hadn't vacated her mind. They had come to her so many times now, each more lucid than the next, and she was convinced they had to mean something, but despite her every effort, she could never make sense of any of it. Those people, places, events... she had never come across them, ever.
Maxx's muteness jarred Nyaru in the side of her head where she should have heard her voice, and she broke momentarily from the conversation to glance over at her. She found her friend wearing a rock solid expression, her eyes darting this way and that as she drifted through her thoughts. Nyaru parted her mouth to ask if she was alright, but Corr spoke up before she could summon the words.
"So I know I don't have to tell you guys," he stated with a swat of his hand and a sigh, "but we have problem."
Shuurei dipped her head sharply to the affirmative. "Yeah, it just isn't right," she agreed. "Tseng's gone too far."
Expecting her support, Corr shifted his gaze expectantly to Maxx, who was still ogling at her palms. She felt his eyes on her and looked over to him, nodding awkwardly.
In lieu of a soapbox, he hopped up from his seat to continue his edict, crossing his arms as he paced the room with a languid stride. "I mean, I realize that there's been all this theft around town, and I can't really blame Tseng if he wants to think we're at fault. We aren't exactly his favorite people, and we've probably done a thing or two to deserve it..."
Corr was referring to an older boy he, Maxx, and Nyaru went to school with, and all four of them had the unfortunate pleasure of being acquainted with. Tseng, the leader of Reno's gang, along with two others who also stuck with him, Cait Sith and Elena, had recently taken up the task of keeping everything in line, at least on their terms, referring to themselves as the 'Sunset Isle Disciplinary Committee'. Maxx and her friends looked upon this as, not only unnecessary, but also unbearably inconvenient. Perhaps it was their lazy, apathetic effort toward all but their greatest passions, or their invasive success in those interests into his own attempts. Shuurei guessed that it was Nyaru's countless rejections to his advances, and Corr's subsequent intimidation when he didn't give in. Whatever it was, Tseng seemed to have hand-picked them as his preferred targets. Due to the fact that the two groups were always at odds with one another, Nyaru had been the first to notice her group's reputation beginning to tarnish, ever so slowly. After all, despite the fact that Tseng and his company were sleazy and reckless, they at least appeared to be doing something relevant for Sunset Isle, even if they weren't in truth. She and her friends were just some kids who sat in an abandoned storeroom near the harbor, spending their after school hours conversing and snacking on sea salt ice cream, never giving thought to what lay beyond. Because of Tseng, their ambiguity was slipping away, lubricated by a conceived reputation, and when she expressed her concerns to the others, Corr felt it needed to be dealt with.
"But that's not what bothers me," he continued. "What bothers me is that he's going around telling everyone we're to blame, so now the whole town is treating us like criminals. Not exactly a stellar situation to be in." He glanced back at Maxx. "So what do we do?"
A look of worry consumed Nyaru's face. Corr was beginning to take the situation personally, and she didn't want him to do anything rash, as was his tendency at times. She gazed over at Maxx, hoping she'd say something to him to cool his jets.
Her friend recognized the anxiety in her expression, and understood what she was thinking. "Well..." Her statement hovered in thoughtful hesitation. "What if we found out who really was stealing stuff? Then no one could pin it on us anymore."
"Detective work," Shuurei grinned, lifting her camera to her face. "Sounds like fun. I can take more pictures."
"And Tseng?" Corr muttered impatiently.
"We can worry about that later," Maxx replied. "Settling the score with him will be no problem once no one suspects us."
He merely grunted, seeming reluctant, but agreeable nonetheless.
"Oh no!" Shuurei exclaimed, wandered to a separate corner of the room and fidgeting about with her camera as she rifled through a box filled with her personal collection of photography odds and ends. "Th-they're gone…" she stammered. "The - I took are gone!" The girl found the noun she had tried to vocalize barbed in her throat, and coupled with the peculiar sensation that welled in her chest, her inability to utter it had her hand flying to her neck and her eyes saucer wide. "Wha...?" she choked.
Her bizarre behavior attracted Corr's concerned attentions. "Shuurei? Are you okay?"
"They're gone! All our -!" Her failure to communicate what she was trying to explain had her gritting her teeth and her foot stamping in frustration.
Nyaru's face sprouted into enlightenment, and after moving her mouth and emitting no sound, she gasped. "You can't say -?"
Shuurei responded with a violent nod. "But you understand, yeah? They're all missing."
"Stolen..." Maxx murmured contemplatively. "And not just the -. The word too…"
Corr glowered. "Tseng couldn't pull off something like this."
"Yeah, you're right," she concurred, mirroring his frown.
"I guess that settles it then," he declared, his face slipping into a mellow grin. "Time for a little sleuthing."
The three girls nodded, and Shuurei darted for the exit, herding the group to the street to get the investigation underway.
Taking up the rear as the others pulled ahead, Maxx found herself left behind when a sudden bout of vertigo stopped her dead in her tracks. Her sight distorted, her head spun, and she stumbled as she felt her knees go weak. She reached out to steady herself, but her hands managed to find only empty air. The ground rose to meet her as her balance and strength gave out. With a hard thump, she collapsed to the gravel portion of the floor, her vision turning black.
Take your place, or leave the other to their fate.
The choice is yours.
Maxx moaned as the voiced subsided and she felt herself coming to. Holding her palm to her face, which now felt like her skull had been filled with bricks and violently shaken, she lifted her quivering body off the ground, brushed off her clothes, and glanced about the room. It was empty, excluding herself. She decided she must have imagined the voice.
Shaking away the last of her queasiness with a toss of her head, she felt her lucidity return as she caught the beat of Nyaru's unmistakably graceful footsteps reentering the room, stopping just beyond the doorway.
"Maxx, are you coming?"
She nodded a silent white lie of a reply. Nyaru seemed convinced as she smiled gently and exited to the street for the second time, Maxx at her heels.
The pair made their way out to the harbor market area, meeting Corr under the hand carved sign that marked the entrance to the general store. Shuurei had become distracted with snapping pictures of the baskets of colourful novelty items placed before the shop window, and he cleared his throat in her direction. "Let's get started," he announced as she tore herself from a hamper of pink and yellow twine.
The bell fastened to the store's panel door tolled their arrival, and the tiny huddle of children scattered as the proprietor, never glancing up from the newspaper he'd buried his head into, called a practiced greeting from his post at the register in the back of the shop.
As the others busied themselves scouring the shelves stocked to bursting with foodstuffs, household necessities, and various other everyday provisions, Maxx took up the task of circling the perimeter. Crowning the waist high chair rail equator was aged and peeling wallpaper, it's tan hue and vintage dusk blossom pattern heavily faded from years of sunlight. Ledges of more items and hanging framed photos choked its surface, and Maxx halted her stride when an oddity amongst a large mural of pictures caught her eye. While most of the frames contained matte images of happy faces and memorable events taken at the market over its long history, a select few were empty, shamefully displaying nothing but plain rectangles. The abandoned frames were all close to the edge of the grouping, indicating each of them were recent snaps, relatively speaking. The general store had transcended four generations, so pictures taken in the last decade or so were modern by comparison.
The noisy clatter of the opening register shook Maxx from her reverie, and she found the owner, Finn, cautiously observing her as he placed the single munny Shuurei had given him for a whip of black licorice into its designated slot in the coin tray. "Guilty conscience, Maxx?" he inquired tellingly, tossing the drawer shut with loud, heavy emphasis.
The girl on the receiving end of his wariness frowned. After loosing his father and older brothers to a violent storm in his younger days, something that, sadly, wasn't uncommon in tiny fishing towns like Sunset Isle, Finn had been the only successor left to run the store he'd inherited after his mother's retirement a few years back. Unenthused with the idea of spending the latter half of his twenties keeping up the family business, he lacked some of the wistfulness and welcoming demeanor Delilah had been so well known for, but he'd taken the task on with a grain of salt, and had never been tactless or abrasive as he was now.
"What are you talking about Finn?" Maxx muttered.
"Really?" he questioned spitefully. "You'd rather play dumb than admit you stole those?" He motioned to the empty frames with a tilt of his goateed chin, tinted fiery copper to match his scruffy hair and compliment his mossy eyes.
Corr was quick to join the fray upon hearing false accusations slanted at his friend. "Hey, ease off Finn."
"Maxx had nothing to do with that," Nyaru added protectively.
His expression softened with a heavy sigh, flickers of his normal manner emerging as he allowed years of friendship to overpower his acrimony. "I wish I could believe you," he assured the kids, "but I can't see why anyone else would steal them."
"What exactly makes you think it was me?" Maxx pressed, defensively folding her arms. She suspected a certain disciplinary committee leader had more than partial involvement, but it couldn't hurt to check.
"I'm not saying anything more," he chastised. "The less we talk, the less I'll be forced to tell Constable Briar if someone reports the thefts. Go see Harper. I'm sure she'll give you the benefit of the doubt."
A point in the direction of the kiosk across the street dismissed them, and as they stepped out into the last remnants of the day's light, Maxx groaned dejectedly and scrubbed her palms over her face. She'd never been in this kind of trouble before, and now that she was it was for something she hadn't even done. It would have been easy to peg the blame on Tseng for spreading poisonous rumors, but it did nothing to ease her strife. From what she could gather, the tendency for gossip to spread like wildfire through the tiny town was in full swing, and it was a safe assumption that the entirety of Sunset Isle had her under their scrutiny. It was a horrendously lonely feeling, and the comforting pressure of Corr's hand settling on the top of her head came just in time.
"It'll be okay," he told her soothingly. His fingers bunched into the hair at the base of her cranium, their pull loosening her low set pigtails, and he used his soft grasp to guide her across the road.
Harper was the owner of the produce stall, and the four friends found her securing bunches of spring onions as they approached the outdoor shop. Their arrival caught her attention, and wisps of her curled grey hair floated about her face as she looked up to them. "Oh, Maxx…" Her mien turned despondent as she recognized the young girl, and her tone corresponded it. "It's you. You used to be one of my favorite customers. Please don't disappoint me..."
Harper's young rhizomes and fresh herbs steeped in hot water had been Maxx's preferred remedy to settle her stomach when she partook in too much ice cream for as far back as she could remember. She'd rarely charged her for the small doses, and even went as far as to present her young patron with an artisan ceramic mug to drink it from as a gift. The accused girl felt a gnawing guilt that the old woman could now possibly believe that her kindness was being repaid with paltry theft, and she shoved her hands into her pockets, scuffing her sole on the stone ground with agitation. "I never stole anything…" she stated in a small voice, eyes cast downward.
Harper looked reluctantly doubtful, but accepting as she placed the last of the scallions into their tub. "Okay..."
In her growing apprehension, Maxx reinforced the obvious. "It's not like I enjoy everyone suspecting me…"
"You've got to find a way to prove you're innocent," the aging grocer advised. "Cheni was crushed when I told her."
Maxx moaned forlornly. The situation just kept getting better… "Cheni knows too?"
Shuurei had helped herself to a stalk of celery to cleanse her palate of the lingering sweetness of anise. "Let's go talk to her," she suggested around a juicy mouthful, nearly striking Nyaru's shoulder with her vegetable as she batonned the half eaten sprout to and fro.
The ice cream stand was a quick traipse around the corner, and the youngsters discovered its manager struggling with a large bowl of unfrozen custard as they came up to her window. Her chunky tortoiseshell barrette barely holding onto her hair, adorned in various spots with patches of confectioner's sugar, as it splayed every which way, and the left strap of her apron drooped over her shoulder spoke volumes to her current state. She'd either recently stumbled back from a rendezvous with Finn in his broom cupboard, or, more likely, she was running behind her stringent self-set schedule. "Hey you four," she greeted quickly, clearly distracted by her task. She turned her back to them to dribble a spoonful of blue colouring gel into the mixture before whirling back. "Haven't seen Coro around, have you?"
"Uh..." Maxx uttered, slightly stunned by the assault of Cheni's kilter and out-of-the-blue inquiries on her senses. Not about to question a desperate friend who clearly couldn't handle any extra mental stress, however, she shifted her eyes about her. Coro was Cheni's large ginger tabby. Checking the most obvious of places first, she glanced up, hoping to find a glimpse of his white booted feet, twitching fluffy tail, or green and grey argyle collar. Sure enough, the feline lay sprawled on the vinyl awning, looking quite content as he warmed himself in the heat of the setting sun. Seeing nothing else to use for a boost, Maxx grabbed Corr's sleeves from behind, and, crawling up his back, perched her knees on his shoulders to use his significant height to elevate herself.
"Gah!" he sputtered, instinctively grabbing her waist to keep balanced. It wasn't the first time his best friend had used him as a climbing mechanism, but it occurred just rarely enough to catch him off guard any time she did.
"Hold still," she told him.
"Geez, you're heavy for a short person," he quipped. A sharp sting of pain shot over his back as Maxx snapped her knee forward, pointedly ramming the toe of her shoe into his shoulder blade. "Ouch…" he grunted. "Watch it. That shoulder is keeping you up."
She ignored him as she reached up and grabbed the front bar of the overhang, and Corr released his grip on her as she swung herself up.
"Hey Coro," she smiled, softly stroking the cat's girth. Her touch stirred him enough to get him to raise his head and open his emerald eyes a fraction. His flat, grumpy face regarded her for a moment. He seemed to decree she wasn't worthy of his concern, and his orange cheek fell back to the canopy with a muffled thud to resume his nap.
Too lazy to protest, low purring came from his throat as Maxx slung him, limp as a ragdoll, over her shoulder. Gripping the bar with her free hand, she pushed herself off the overhang and dangled briefly by one arm until she released her grip, falling to her feet on the ground below.
"Oh, thank you," Cheni bubbled, setting her starter aside and fetching Coro from the girl's arms. His round stomach spread and concealed his back paws as she sat him down on the bar top, looking none too pleased to be roused from his slumber. "He just keeps wandering off, and you know how I worry. I owe you Maxx. I always hate leaving the store to track him down."
Coro mewled a begrudging yowl; one that, if translated, likely suggested any inconvenience of that like was what came with the lack of a third daily serving of cod trimmings, or some other such intolerable barbarism.
"Then maybe you can help me out," Maxx offered, quickly cashing in her favor as she swept the cat fur from her vest. "I was told you heard the rumor about me."
Cheni nodded hesitantly, satiating Coro's narcissism with a scratch behind his ear. "Harper filled me in when I mentioned stuff from the store went missing."
"I hope I don't have to tell you, but I didn't do it," Maxx insisted.
"I never doubted you," Cheni assured her.
Maxx audibly sighed, relieved. "Thank you," she crooned. "So what did you have stolen?"
"My -. A bunch of them."
Not at all surprised by that point, Corr looked coolly to his friends. "Looks liked everyone is having their - taken, the word included."
"This is no run of the mill thief," Shuurei mused.
Nyaru tugged ponderingly on the silver chain of her jade pendant. "Tseng must know something. Even if he had no direct involvement, he felt the need to divert the fault to Maxx regardless of the fact that she clearly couldn't have done this. That sounds like an attempt to misdirect if ever there was one."
"Well then," Maxx said, a confident grin spread across her face, "let's go find him!"
The quartet wasted no time making their way to the training grounds, where they knew Tseng and his less than desirable company could be found. Puffs of dust billowed from the ground under their feet as they entered into the enclosed square. They stopped in dead center, discovering Elena, Reno, and Cait Sith looking over the ground's scoreboard.
Elena, the first to notice, turned to them, scowling fiercely. "Thieves!"
"That was low, yo." Reno flicked a strand of red hair out of his eye.
As was her normalcy, Cait Sith remained mute, giving her tiny silver tiara a keen nudge.
Corr scoffed dismissively at their rivals. "You think so, huh?"
"Nice comeback, blondie."
To his chagrin, Corr's composure became unwillingly riled as Tseng entered the grounds, smiling smugly.
"Maybe you wanna come over here and say that, Tseng…" Corr threatened, disguising his frustration behind an airy smirk.
"Maybe another time," Tseng replied in a calm, self-righteous tone. "For now, you can give us back the - you stole."
Nyaru's hands fell to her hips. "We've nothing to give," she retorted.
"Yeah," Shuurei fumed. "What makes you think we took them anyway?"
"Simple, those - were undeniable proof that we had you pathetic weaklings completely pawned," Tseng gloated, as he began to circle them.
Maxx winced and sneered. Regrettably, Tseng's claim was true. The last faceoff with the committee had not ended well for her side, and, worst of all, the defeat was mostly her fault. Okay… entirely her fault (it wasn't the time or place to lie to herself). Corr's morals and unflappably even temper didn't allow him to pick fights without serious cause, but Tseng's shallow allegations were the perfect trigger for her act-now-think-later nature. In twenty-twenty hindsight, her reaction had probably been exactly what he'd wanted. He could now add short-fused to her catalogue of failings he so loved to bring up as often as possible.
Her bruises had lasted nearly a week, and her pride still hadn't recovered.
"So..." The dark haired boy halted before his companions. "...What did you do to destroy the evidence? Not that it really matters, of course. We don't need some worthless - to prove that you're pathetic."
Elena grinned icily. "Wash, rinse, repeat."
"My thoughts exactly," Tseng agreed. In unison with his crew, he fell into a battle stance, and Maxx and Corr were quick to follow suit.
"Perhaps if you kneel and beg I'll let it go," Tseng offered with affronting sincerity.
Maxx felt her breath grow fast and sharp, vibrating in her chest as the faintest beginnings of a snarl, and she knew her patience had run out. She expelled as much frustration as a long exhale could carry to compose herself, but even the blind could see that, while calm, she was far from lenient and she straighten her stature, puckered her brow and bored a challenging stare into Tseng's eyes with enough force to auger its way through the back of his head. She crossed a majority of the distance separating them with slow, purposeful strides, finding immense pleasure in his squirming as her gaze held fast to his own. The closer she got, the more he twitched, and he was practically convulsing by the time she halted, just out of reach of either cluster of bodies. Even as she fell to her knees, crunching into the dirt and rocks, consecutive gasps echoing around her from all sides, she viced his gape tightly in her deep blue orbs. It wasn't until she dipped her face and planted her palms into the dust that she felt his ego return full swing to contaminate the air once again.
Shuurei's head pivoted from Maxx to Nyaru and Corr and back again, her features taught with distress. "What is she doing?"
She caught a fleeting glimpse of the joints in Corr's hand turn pallid as it flexed expectantly, like the muscles of a wild animal readying for a fatal pounce. Her elder friend seldom strayed from his clement manner and into the fiercely efficient combatant she knew he was capable of being, but when he did she was always grateful she wasn't on the receiving end. Shuurei guessed he still had a bitter taste on his tongue from Maxx's past walloping with her conflict with Tseng, and he wasn't going to allow her to come to harm again so soon.
"I don't know…" he replied, his hushed tone adding to his building intimidation.
The voices of neither her friends, nor the mocking snickers Elena chortled in her direction were able to reach the summit of Maxx's attention. Instead, she had her focus honed in on the training katana lying precariously between her position and Tseng. The instant he turned his head, she swiftly dashed forward, veiled by a haze of orange dust, grabbed the weapon, and leapt back, ready to duel.
As the shroud settled, the committee leader found his now-opponent with a sly grin upon her lips.
"What's the matter Tseng?" she drawled, amplifying her taunt with a haughty tilt of her head. "Afraid to fight a weakling?"
He smirked right back as he took the sword of bound wood Elena offered to him. With a snap of his arm, he held the weapon out in front of him, pointing square at Maxx's face. "I'd be happy to show you just how scared I am."
Eager to oblige, Maxx charged and took a hard swing at Tseng's side, which he guarded.
"Stop wasting my time," he jeered. "Fight like you mean it." He nudged Maxx away, and with a firm hit to her collarbone, knocked her to the ground. As he moved to strike from above, the fallen girl hastily threw her shinai above her head. Tseng's attack ricocheted off the shaft, allowing her to land a hit to the side of his ribcage as he stumbled. Her challenger instinctively reached to hold where pained throbbed at his side, and Maxx, returning to her feet, landed a second blow to his shoulder. As she went to strike again, Tseng blocked clumsily. Reacting quickly, she countered with a sharp knock to his forearm, and finally a solid stab to the chest. He staggered for a long, drawn-out moment, then fell to one knee, gripping his chest.
Reno and Elena rushed to their leader, standing as human shields between him and his conqueror.
"Tseng's not at his best," Reno excused lamely.
"Competition decides," Elena proclaimed.
Smudged with dirt, caked in a sheen of sweat, and beaming triumphantly, Shuurei couldn't resist taking a photo of her victorious friend standing over her fallen foe. She bounced with excitement and lifted her camera, quickly snapping a candid shot. "Way to go, Maxx!" she praised.
Her subject smiled at her through the crosshairs of the finder, when suddenly a white blur flashed over the frame and obscured the view. It swirled around her with tremendous force, ripping her camera from her grasp. She froze in speechless shock as the shape took off down a narrow street toward the market area of the harbor. "What the..." she faltered.
"The thief!" Nyaru declared.
"Follow it!" Maxx hollered, and raced after the odd creature. She chased it through the twists and turns of the city side streets, and she knew she had lost her friends when she began hurdling fences and scaling walls to keep up with the bandit. Not wanting to lose track of the culprit, she decided to meet them later, and continued the pursuit. The hunt led her all the way to the edge of town, where she hesitated as the thief dove into the forest that led to the old abandoned beach house.
"Easy to get lost in there..." she thought to herself. Frowning, she huffed and shook her head. "Gotta catch it," she told herself, and took off into the underbrush. Inside the spectral glowing dome of the canopy, she saw the strange being dancing wildly around the tree trunks, obviously not trying to hide. As her gaze followed its erratic path through the flora, she found herself slightly confused as she grew the distinct impression it was acting like it wanted her to follow it. She decided, however, not to overthink it. A too-good-to-be-true opportunity was better than none at all. "Fine by me," she told it, heading the way it went as it ducked out into the open.
Shoving her way through dense bracken, she found the critter waiting outside the gates to the beach mansion, swaying idly. As she approached, feeling it watch her, she heard a strange, garbled voice, once again not from without, but inside her own mind.
Comrade, join us once more.
Maxx growled through gritted teeth. She'd had more than enough ominous voices vying for her psyche for one day, and she wasn't tolerating any more of it. "Shut up!" she ordered, swinging at the creature with the sword she had brought with her. It hurled backward, but quickly regained it's wobbly stature. She made another few attempts, but to no avail. No amount of force seemed to phase it.
"No good," she panted.
Had her recent experiences not included enigmatic dreams and disembodied utterances, Maxx may have been aghast when she felt the warm sensation of prickling thread through the veins of her arm and fan across her palm, but they had, and when a white glow and semitransparent swirling shapes consumed the shinai in her grasp, her own lack of shock was more jarring than the experience itself. The light dissipated as abruptly as it came and a sword, a real sword complete with a flat blade and decorative hilt, was left in its wake.
Maxx gaped, skimming the crimson sash that hung from the grip along the webbing of her fingers and massaging the polished cerulean stone embedded in the guard with the pad of her thumb. "Where did this come from?"
She looked from the mysteriously acquired weapon to her foe, then back again, deciding this merit in her favor warranted another attempt. She retook her stance, and as the new weapon struck the creature's grey flesh, it made a very different sound, obviously doing damage to it. Maxx couldn't help grinning in surprised satisfaction. With viral enthusiasm she lunged full throttle into a blinding fray, striking repeatedly at the organism until it burst into distorted light, scattering a geyser of photos into the air as it faded away.
The sword in Maxx's hand vanished just as it had come to her, leaving her palm empty as pictures rained to the peat and patched lawn. Her gaze fell to the amassed spread of coloured tiles at her feet, and she let out a heavy sigh.
"Better get these back to the others."
Shuurei's camera and the stack of photos in tow, Maxx made the trek back to the Usual Spot with deliberate latency, a fretting grimace twitching at her brow as she wondered just how exactly she was going to explain everything that had occurred when she herself wasn't even sure of what precisely had happened. When Nyaru's smile met her as she came in from behind the curtain, she still wasn't any closer to an answer.
"You're back."
"Thanks for waiting." Maxx replied, handing Shuurei her camera, being welcomed with an appreciative grin in return.
Corr rose from his seat as she approached him, the sea of unspoken questions clear as they stirred behind his eyes. "So you found everything?" was all he asked. His restraint triggered visible astonishment on Maxx's face, and she chose not to speak in response, instead nodding silently as he picked up the photo on top of the pile in her hands. "It's you and Cheni, outside the ice cream shop."
"That was the day she opened," Maxx observed. "I bought the very first sea salt ice cream, and she insisted we take it to commemorate."
Nyaru peered at the picture over Corr's shoulder. "It's a lovely photo."
From her perch at his opposite side, Shuurei started. "Oh! Nyaru, you said photo!"
Perseverant as ever, Corr continued his queries. "What can you tell us about the thief?"
"Not much," Maxx revealed, opting for secrecy for the time being. It wasn't like she had any less confusion than he did. "I got to the gate outside the old beach house and found the pictures lying there."
The irritated scoff he grunted complimented an exasperated roll of his chin. "Then how do we prove we didn't take them?"
The dismissive chuckle his best friend snickered at him did nothing to ease his aggravation. "I'll return them on my way home. Don't worry Corr, it'll be fine."
Shuurei picked up the next few photos, looking over them thoughtfully. "Hey, did you guys notice all these pictures are of Maxx?"
"Hmm, I suppose that's why everyone thought we took them." Nyaru mused, also grabbing a few pictures from the stack.
"And Tseng wasn't spreading rumors about us after all..." Corr added begrudgingly.
Maxx fanned through the remaining pictures in her hands like a flip book. "They're really all of me?"
"Sure are," Shuurei replied, holding up another photo with the eldest girl's face on it.
"See?" Nyaru said, showing her yet another.
"Every last one," Shuurei chirped, handing back the photos. "Maybe the thief was trying to steal the real Maxx."
Corr grinned lazily. "Yeah, right… Why would anyone want to steal Maxx? They'd have to put up with her if they did."
"Thanks Corr…" Maxx chided with a crooked grin.
The soothing sound of faint, reserved laughter brought with it a lifting of the heaviness of the recent events from the four friends, and a therapeutic end to a hard day as the evening toll of the ferry station clock tower began to ring. They glanced up through the iron grate ceiling to the sky, where the sun's light was giving way to the shroud of dusk.
"Well, I guess I should head home," Shuurei said, loading her book bag and camera onto her tiny shoulder. "It'll be dark soon."
Nyaru nodded. "Let's go together."
"You go ahead," Maxx told them. "I'll lock up."
"See you tomorrow," Nyaru said with a wave, enveloping Maxx in solitude as she followed Corr and Shuurei out to the street.
Serenading the seclusion with the same melody Nyaru had been humming hours prior, less a measure of the pitch and range she'd delivered, Maxx balled the bits and pieces of her uniform into a wrinkled bunch and stuffed them into her messenger pack, taking care to remove her key ring before they became lost in endless folds of grey and navy. The rusted gate lock clicked with a forceful turn of its designated key, stubborn as ever, and the golden ribbing of a cuff that hung loose from her bag flapped in her wake as she dashed from the alley and along the wide banister of a rampway. The rail ended where a trail of posts caked with dried gull droppings began, and she yelped elatedly as she hopped their gaps one by one, completing her path at the pedestal of a lamppost, the force of her halt circling her in a full spin as she grabbed the column.
While Sunset Isle had certainly earned its name with the brilliant displays of vivid colour that painted the skies in the winter of each clear day, Maxx's preference leaned to the starry skies of twilight, belted at the horizon in smudges of muted lavender and slate-blue. The night sky was a constant, always moving but never truly changing, and there was security in that sort of permanency.
A breeze that was distinctly evening whirled over her skin, and her eyes shut, heightening the feeling of the chill crawling over her skin. As she tilted her face skyward, a smooth voice, one she hadn't heard yet, rang in her head.
Where am I?
"Huh?"
Who are you...?
The whirs and blips of piled computer parts filled a cold metal room. A mural of blinking monitors cast out a sterile green glare, the area's only light, that couldn't breach the concealed visage of the figure seated before them. Swaddled in black from the hood over their head to the boots on their feet, the dimness masked all but the flickers of their movement as they slammed their gloved fist onto the keyboard at their lap.
"Mindless Nobodies..." he grimaced. "They hacked into the system."
A few taps of the keys brought up a new interface on one of the warbled, grainy screens.
"Through the beach," he said thoughtfully. "Best to avoid any in the future." Clothed fingers bristled facial hair as he held a hand to his chin. "Stealing photographs must mean the Dusks cannot distinguish differences in the data."
The chair he sat in creaked meagerly when he settle back. "Time is running out. Naminé must find him soon..."
"What happened to my home? My island?"
"They will come at you out of nowhere, as long as you continue to wield the Keyblade."
"Hey, why don't you come with us? We can go to other worlds on our vessel".
"Sora, go with them. Especially if you want to find your friends."
"Donald Duck."
"Name's Goofy."
"I'm Sora. I'll go with you guys."
"The Heartless have great fear of the Keyblade."
"That's right. The Keyblade."
"But the boy is a problem. He found one of the Keyholes."
"Where... am I?"
"Sora! Kairi!"
With a frantic gasp, Maxx's eyes snapped open, her body flinging forward as the screaming voice in her dream woke her. Panting, she wiped the cold sweat from her clammy forehead with the back of her palm, staring at her bare feet as they poked out from her crumpled linens.
"A key..." she murmured, flexing her toes.
Peering out her open window as the morning toll pealed into her room, she scrunched her face in agony at the thought of getting out of bed to go to school. Her strange, nightly dreams had been making her sleep anything but restful, and she felt exhausted.
"Only five days left," she assured herself. Her leaded limbs dragged sluggishly as she lifted herself from her mattress and went to change, grabbing her uniform off the back of her desk chair as she passed it.
- The 2nd Day -
Maxx's thoughts had once again spent the day mulling over the newest disclosures of her dreams of the previous night, lulling her activity into a habit driven daze. Even now, as she took the last steps of the journey from school to the Usual Spot, she was only half aware that she stopped just outside the gate, her eyes staring deeply into nothing.
"A key..." she said softly. "A keyblade."
Her lean hands contracted taught around the sheath holding the very same make of shinai that had transformed into the sword she had used to defeat the photo bandit only a day ago. While remarkably effective, the weapon was no keyblade. She was sure of that.
"But it was in my dream," she reminded herself, aloud for affirmation. "It must mean something."
She frowned thoughtfully, tapping the end of the shinai handle to her chin. Behind her, the muffled sound of a body shifting in heavy clothing echoed through the quiet alley, jarring her from her pondering. Startled by the suddenness and close proximity of the noise, she spun, hand firmly planted on the shinai grip, ready to fight off whoever or whatever she assumed was trying to sneak up on her. Instead, she found a tall someone in a long black coat idling by the kitchen entrance to the oyster bar, their face hidden deep in a hood but clearly turned to her, probably wondering why a strange girl was readying to pounce at them.
With no imminent threat, Maxx dropped her hand from her weapon and relaxed her stature. "Sorry…" she sighed repentantly. "I didn't hear you come… up…" Her apology trailed as the cloaked figure turned their back to her and disappeared down a stairwell. They hadn't spoken a word, but Maxx wasn't surprised. If she'd just done what she did to herself, she wouldn't want to talk to her either. Frustrated, she exhaled, and hung her head. She never used to be paranoid, jumping into the defensive at any unexpected stimuli.
Her bottom lip was firmly bit between her teeth when she wavered into the Usual Spot, and the prattle her friends had engaged in ceased when her troubled expression didn't go unnoticed.
"Maxx, are you alright?" Nyaru inquired gingerly.
Shuurei shifted on the small crate she was sitting on. "You look like you saw your own ghost."
"You know, at this point I might just believe that to be possible," she replied cryptically, tumbling to the open gap next to Nyaru on the sofa and tangling herself into a tight ball of limbs and sullenness.
Shuurei frowned in her direction. "So… are you okay?"
She nodded, not out of honesty but of custom. "Sure."
She felt the armrest supporting her back sag with the added weight of Corr sitting himself upon it, then his gaze rest on her expectantly. She couldn't bring herself to look back, even knowing the muted clatter of his dog tags was the only sound she'd hear from him. He wouldn't speak. He didn't have to. Corr always, always knew when she was hiding something from him, and avoiding his eyes was all the kept her from spilling every gritty detail. She wasn't sure she could handle that yet.
"Really, I'm good," she reiterated.
Fortunately, Corr also knew that when she was secretive it was for a reason, and never pressured her to speak up when she clearly wasn't ready to. He alluded to this boundary with an acknowledging hum. "Okay." A roll of his shoulders dismissed the subject entirely. "Anyway, we have an issue that needs our attention."
Nyaru smirked wonderingly as he reached for his right seat pocket. "We do?"
His hand reemerged clinging to a sheet of pale indigo paper creased into a tri-fold. "Yep. They put out the vendor list for the Dusk Blossom Festival today, so we need to decide as a group which ones get the privilege of our patronage." He flourished his facetiously smug tone with a showy hand gesture, and Shuurei giggled. "We need to buy our ferry tickets too." When the girls merely stared back at him with no reply, their lack of enthusiasm slumped his shoulders. "What?"
"Uh, Corr, we're broke," Maxx pointed out flatly. "You bought us a new blanket and tarp set."
"Maxx and I got new yukata," Shuurei added.
"And I paid for the groceries to make packed dinners," Nyaru reminded.
Maxx uncoiled her arms to give him a punitive rap to the temple with her knuckles. "We were going to beg our parents to buy our ferry tickets as an end of term gift, remember?"
"You of little faith…" Corr chided, rocking from his seat and heading for the door. "That's why we're going to look at the odd job postings in the harbor market. Come on."
Sighing, Maxx shed her crested blazer as Nyaru and Shuurei followed him outside. "Great, nothing like hard labor," she grumbled, plopping her feet down to the old floorboards. Prying off her black leather shoes, she rolled off her long white socks and tucked them deep under the tongue in twisted lumps. Her sleeveless woolen sweater vest flopped to the cushion next to her as she pulled it over her head and tossed it aside. Yanking free her black tie, she stood, undid the buttons of her white dress shirt, and opened the zipper on the side of her black pleated skirt, all of which promptly joined the vest on the sofa. In nothing but her striped undershirt and small, clinging athletic shorts, she shivered as the air hit her skin, practically jumped into her navy blue shorts, and saw Shuurei return as she shrugged her white hooded pullover down her midsection.
"Hurry up, Maxx," her friend urged. "We're waiting for you."
"I know, I'm coming," she grunted, slipping her feet into her sneakers and chasing after Shuurei as she went to meet the others.
Outside, the pair found Nyaru and Corr looking over a poster promoting the school district's annual Dueling Club competition. Maxx and Corr were both members, and eager for the tournament to begin. To maintain fairness and avoid one competitor too closely studying the form and techniques of another, revealing your place in the finals was against the rules, but Maxx was operating on the very safe assumption that Corr had made the cut, and while she had in fact earned her way into the last of the four spots, his faith in her was nothing short of generous.
"Only two more days," he said to her, his voice alive with the most excitement his temperate personality could muster. "We have to make it to the finals, Maxx. Then we can share the prize between the four of us, no matter who wins."
Maxx smirked confidently. "Challenge accepted. I'll try to go easy on you."
"Don't you always?" he grinned, placing his hand on her head, squeezing it gently and ruffling her hair. Even though Maxx was the oldest of the group, she almost comically lacked the height to back it up, only slightly taller than Shuurei. At first, Corr had taken to palming her head to remind (and irritate) her about her shortcoming, but eventually it became a sign of endearment, a personal symbol of friendship the two of them shared.
"Now, on to business," he instructed, crossing his arms. "One ferry ticket to beach where the festival is held is nine hundred munny."
"That's thirty-six hundred for all four of us," Nyaru replied.
"Plus three hundred each to spend at the vendors," Corr added. "Forty-eight hundred total. What do we have now?"
"I've got eight hundred," Shuurei answered, slapping the pocket in her khakis that held her coinage.
Nyaru inexplicably materialized her homemade change pouch from the swingy gathers of her shirred sundress and she checked inside. "I have six-fifty."
Maxx reached into her vest, procuring her own small handful of the pastel coloured orbs. "All I have is one-fifty. Sorry guys..."
"Sixteen hundred altogether," Shuurei commented. "Thirty-two to go."
Corr tipped his head thoughtfully. "Eight each. If we go check the board right now, we can probably earn it all before the day is over."
As he took off toward the market square, Nyaru following, Maxx leaned over to murmur to Shuurei. "I thought he said he had it taken care of."
The younger girl did indeed recall an implication of that nature, but shrugged nonethless. "That's okay. I want to scoop for goldfish at the festival."
Maxx huffed some strands of hair out of her face. "Guess we better catch up quick then, before they take the easy jobs."
Laughing, Shuurei dashed after her friends, Maxx close behind.
"Nyaru! Corr! Wait up!"
"Almost there!"
Corr strained his arms to turn the crank lifting the grade of host ropes one final rotation so Maxx, at the ready and yelling instructions to him, could help him remove them.
When the community board showed that Sullivan, the owner of the mussel farm, was looking for extra hands for the final harvest before the festival, Corr had thought the chance for the four of them to all work together was too good to pass on. Of course, when he'd gotten fixed with the task of raising the heavy beams of cultured lines, his enthusiasm dampened. Donning a pair of work gloves and a tackle knife, Maxx would hack large bunches of the mollusks free while he held the weighted ropes above the surface. Nearby, Nyaru stood at the grading table, sorting out the younger seeds and tossing the occasional stowaway starfish back into the drink, while Shuurei loaded the mature bivalves into plastic net bags and dated the log tags with a waterproof marker. Corr knew he'd be returning home that night with aching muscles, reeking of shellfish and smudged with slime from the mussel beards, but having a hard earned day's pay and afternoon spent with his best friends to show for it was more than a fair tradeoff in his eyes.
Straying from his own grade where his experience and skill was lifting lines and tearing free large clusters of mussels with bare hands, Sullivan wiped a stained rag over his grimy forehead as he approached his helpers.
"Thanks for helping out kids. The buyers really swamped me this year."
Maxx grinned through the exertion of easing the grade back into the water after Corr unlocked the pulley. "No problem. Just imagine the angry mobs if there weren't any of Sullivan's Famous Mussels in the seafood boils."
The angler chuckled his gravely laugh as he offered her one of the mesh sacks, filled with munny orbs. "Flattery won't make this bag any heavier Maxx." She took the pouch, clinging tightly to avoid dropping it into the sea. "Now, I think we can call it for the day. You four have fun at the festival, and row back safe."
Grinning, Shuurei tossed her final bag into the flooded storage tank. "About time! Let's ditch this barge and go get our tickets."
Maxx crouched to place the knife and gloves into the lockbox bolted below the lever, hearing splashing behind her as Corr rinsed his hands, but not seeing the handful of kelp he ripped from the dock support.
"Last one to the boat has to row," he announced, and promptly shoved the slippery, ice-cold weed down the back of her shirt. Her shrill shriek sent the nearby sandpipers flapping, and he took off for the dinghy before her flailing knocked him into the water.
In an act of desperation, Maxx tore her vest over her head, tangling the rubbery tendril in her hair. She groaned in disgust as she yanked it free, unsuppressed laughter pealing from the boat where her friends awaited her. Indignantly, she huffed, and pitched Corr's slimy instrument of sabotage over the edge of the dock.
"Jerks…"
"So how did we do?" Shuurei asked eagerly as Nyaru held out her pouch and opened the top, letting Maxx dump in their earnings. She peered inside, quickly counting the final total before they headed into the ferry terminal.
"Good job everyone," she praised, pulling the bag closed by its beaded drawstrings. "We're all set. Five thousand munny total." Trusting the pockets of Maxx's vest over the ones in her dress, she handed the full bag over to the older girl. "Let's go spend some of it, shall we?"
Standing next to Maxx, Corr held back with her as he watched Shuurei and Nyaru head inside. "I don't know what's going on with you," he murmured to her, "but whatever it is, and however things turn out, you'll always have us."
Glancing up at him, she arched an eyebrow. "'However things turn out'? What does that mean?" she remarked.
Her graveness made him chuckle. "Exactly what I said, kelp-head," he teased, messing the hair on her head before her took after the other girls.
With her own quiet laugh, Maxx chased after him. Before she reached the steps to the entrance, something unseen tripped her at the ankles. She toppled and hit the ground in a skid, scraping her forearms and hitting her chin hard. "Ow..." she moaned, remedially rubbing her swelling face. A pair of black shoes next to her left elbow caught her eye, and she looked up, seeing the hooded stranger she'd nearly attacked earlier that day. "You..."
She grunted as they grabbed her by the arm and pulled her roughly to her feet, and blinked in surprise as an older voice whispered to her. She thought she recognized it, though she couldn't recall from where. The words it spoke drew her brow together into an uncomprehending knot. "What...?" she murmured.
"Maxx!"
She glanced over to Corr when she heard him call her name from the portico.
"Hurry!" he hollered. "The ticket counter is closing!"
She nodded, and moved to tug her arm out of the grasp of the faceless enigma, only to find they were gone. Scowling, she dashed up the steps and through the glass doors into the station, where Corr was leaning into the ticket counter.
"Four students," he requested. "For the night of the festival."
"Pay up Maxx," Shuurei chirped.
As ordered, she plunged her hand into her vest to grab the bag of munny. When she felt nothing but the linted void of her pocket, her face became panicked. "Oh no..." she blurted, desperately patting down the rest of her clothing's limited compartments. "It's gone..."
Her deduction had Corr instantly grimacing with unease. "What do you mean, 'gone'?" he pressed.
Maxx ceased her search and snapped her head over her shoulder, glaring outside where she had fell. "He took it," she seethed, stalking toward the doors.
"Wait!" Nyaru protested. "Where are you going?"
"I had the munny before I fell," Maxx insisted. "I bet the guy who tripped me took it."
Corr looked at her strangely, confused. "Guy?"
"We can still catch him!" she urged. When she heard no footsteps following her, she looked to her friends, who were all watching her with odd expressions. "What's wrong?"
"What are you talking about?" Corr frowned. "There was no one but you."
Her forehead furrowed, fazed. "Huh?"
"Sorry kids," the ticket vendor bellowed. "We're closed."
Shuurei sighed in defeat as the lock on the ticket window clicked shut. "Aw man..."
Maxx fidgeted her hands as her friends passed her by to head outside.
"There was no one… there...?"
Seated in front of the bell chamber high on the station tower, Maxx's ice cream lay in her hand, untouched, dripping melted blue dairy into the ocean below. Her guilt and utter confusion clouded her awareness, and she certainly couldn't focus on eating.
"It's melting," Nyaru crooned, snapping Maxx out of her daze.
She looked to her friends as they watched the sunset, filled with regret. "I... I'm sorry..."
"Stop worrying," Corr told her.
"That sure was strange, though," Shuurei mused.
"Very odd indeed," Nyaru agreed.
Maxx's gaze fell back to the bar in her grasp, recalling the voice that had whispered to her.
Not yet. In time...
Secluded in his room of mechanisms and screens, the cloaked figure lounged back in his chair, juggling a small cloth sack in his left hand as he intently observed the largest of the displays flashing greenscale images.
"My apologies," he lilted, "but the time is not here quite yet."
With the tap of a single button, the pouch disappeared in a swirl of glowing shapes.
"Soon, my dear. Soon..."
Closing Author's Notes
So folks, I'm going to be taking a bit of time at the bottom of each chapter to actually talk a little about the story, and what was going through my head as I was writing it. A lot of thought and planning goes into every chapter, and I figured you may get a little more out of the story if I shared some of it with you. Oh, and I'm also going to be noting what songs I listened to the most while writing the chapter. If it's good enough for Penn Jillette's chapters, it's good enough for mine (seriously, read his books if you haven't already. They're utterly hilarious). The songs aren't related to the subject matter of the story in any way, I'm just a music snob.
My goal through this whole story is going to be defining character. I've been working with these characters for years now in different ways, and I have a great attachment to all of them. My hope is that by the end of this story, you will have the same connection to them that I do, and that you know them so well they feel like old friends.
This chapter in particular, and in the next couple to come, I wanted to give a real sense of the setting. Sunset Isle really is a character in itself. I was concerned it would project itself as an exact copy of Twilight Town. While there are intentional similarities, it is still an original setting. I took my inspiration for most of it from old Atlantic fishing towns, where everything revolves around the sea and what it provides.
It's going to be a long, emotional journey, and I'm very excited to have many people along for the ride. I hope you enjoy it as much as I know I will.
Reviews are much appreciated guys, and I'm always happy to answer questions that won't spoil anything.
Till next we post!
Au revoir!
Sayonara!
Buenos noches!
Hey I Don't Know (Kongos), Desperate Measures (Marianas Trench), The Times They Are A-Changin' (Whisper In The Noise)