Author's Note: While not necessary to read this fanfic is canon with my other small story "Lea's Training Journal."

Chapter one: Time Exploitations

Kairi and Lea were destroying pieces of furniture summoned by Merlin. Lea looked at the circular barrier slowly shrinking around them acting as a time limit; they weren't going to make it at this rate. He moved over to help Kairi destroy a large table. "How good are your barriers," he asked.

"huh.. Why?" She asked surprised.

"Think you could hold back the wall for a bit?"

"On it," Kairi stated. She ran to the border and cast her own barrier. A slightly visible reflective energy field glowed around her. She channeled most of the energy to the side stopping the wall. It only slowed at first but then it came to a halt. She watched Lea destroyed the remaining furniture. He was striking fast on all sides until the next piece broke. Four pieces left. "Come on.. hurry," she thought. Her magic was slowly dwindling on this.

After 40 seconds past and two more pieces destroyed Lea looked back at Kairi. She looked exhausted. It would be close but he thought he could make the time limit now. As he started with the next one he yelled, "That's enough, come back towards the middle."

Kairi broke off. She was feeling a bit light headed but started on the other piece, this one a sofa. She swung at it a few times but couldn't manage to do much because of her fatigue. She looked around. They had about a 15 feet diameter to work with now. Then Lea showed up and set the chair ablaze with a big burst of magic. A couple swings later it was done.

"Always cutting it close aren't you," Kairi said with a sigh of relief.

Lea allowed his keyblade to fade away too. "If you think this is close you have no idea. We had a good 15 seconds to spare."

"Oh-ho actually make that negative 25 seconds," Merlin said as he walked up to them.

"Come on, you're counting the time stopping the wall. Nothing says we couldn't do that." Lea complained.

"Oh but you did." Merlin injected summoning a scroll. "Remember signing this when I agreed to train you?"

"Well yeah but-"

"Section 8 clause II, 'As a student you agree not to disrupt the spirit of any training exercise or event instructed by me.'" Merlin read.

"We're sorry Merlin, but don't you agree that one reason we train is to learn to be more creative?" Kairi said.

"We'll yes."

At that, she quickly inserted "So then our actions follow 'The spirit of the training exercise' don't they?"

He sighed "Confound it, I'm getting too old for this. Okay, you can have this one. Take the rest of the day off. Tomorrow Master Yen Sid wants to talk to you."

"For what?" Lea asked.

"I don't know but I'm sure it will be interesting," Merlin said and vanished.


"Good job today, Princess" Lea commented while they were grabbing a tray of food. The room was a square shape with five small tables forming a pentagon. The food magically appeared on a stand in front of a room. Lea wondered where it came from.

"You're going to keep using that nickname aren't you," Kairi said with an eye roll.

"Hey, you're the one who told me."

"Someday I'll find out something out about you too," she half threatened. They say down with their food at the usual table. Kairi remembered the first day when they awkwardly sat a table away. But then that morning Lea approached her and apologized for kidnapping her. They talked about it and decided to start over. She was glad that was over. "That was a rough day; I could barely hold that wall back. Merlin must have powerful magic to do that and control the furniture at the same time."

"He probably had elixirs." Lea pointed out. He then had that mischievous facial expression Kairi knew all too well. "When we get out of here tomorrow we can probably smuggle you some for future group training. Let's see how much that annoys Merlin."

"Is there a particular reason why you want to make our instructor mad at us?"

"No, not really, I'm just evening the playing field. Also, don't deny that you want to see his reaction too."

"Alright fine, speaking about tomorrow do you have any guess why we are seeing Master Yen Sid."

Lea scratched his head. "I've been thinking about that too. I'm not even sure how much time has passed out there. It's been like two months since you arrived."'

"So like 18 days," Kairi said

"How'd you figure that?"

"I actually read those books Yen Sid gives us."

"Hey now, books are fine when you actually have a question but I just don't see the point of going through mountains of irrelevant facts," Lea said defensively; which was true. He tried to read on the relationship between a nobody and a heartless before. But that topic is so confusing that not even the writers seem to make sense of it and some things he knew were flat out wrong.

"Okay, if you say so," Kairi said.

"Anyways, Merlin said it would be 'interesting' I'll tell you right now interesting is always a bad sign," Lea stated a bit more grimly than Kairi was use to from him.

"Now don't go pessimistic on me. I get enough of that from Riku," she said.

"Alright, but come tomorrow you'll see I'm always right." He said.