Let's how Mizuki is grasping the Heartless situation at hand.
Okay, she told me to go find Erick, and that's what I'm gonna do. No distractions, no obstacles, just get to Erick. I hope Risa will be fine, she said she was had Dark connections 'cuz the kid in the mask brought her down there. She had a scary, near-death experience in some evil dark abyss and now she's going back just to save this world. That girl's got some guts. I wish I could be as strong and courageous as her. But there's no point wishing on what I could be, I gotta focus on what I have to deal with now and that's finding Erick. He should be at his office at this hour, right? Okay Miz, run!
My heel throbs when I take another step-these flats are not meant for running. "Just suck it up and move," I encourage myself as I run along the sidewalk. I don't see any more Heartless here, does that mean that Risa and I defeated them all? The street adjacent to me cracks as a huge quake makes me stumble to the ground. I hang on to the fire hydrant for support, wondering why Mother Nature decides to have an earthquake today of all the days. Windows all along the street shatter and when I think it won't ever end, it eventually does. "What was that about?"
I get up and rush down the street Erick's office is at, sprinting as my life and the lives of everyone here depended on it. When I breeze through the door, Erick looks up from his papers calmly. "Hello Mizuki, here for a mission?"
"Here for a mission? Are you crazy?"
"What's wrong with you?"
"What's wrong with me? There are Heartless running around-don't you watch the news or listen to the radio? Do you keep yourself here all the time?" I berate, flailing my arms around crazily. It drives me insane that this guy is sitting in here doing paper work while the world's ending. What makes people like him so damn calm during crisis modes like this? Another earthquake rattles the office, the lamp falls off the desk and breaks, leaving us in the dark, and Erick grips the edges of his seat as I slide under the desk. The earthquake stops and I get out from under the desk. "Like now."
Erick sighs, losing his nonchalant expression and gets up from the chair. "This is a bad situation we're in. But if you didn't come for a mission then why did you come?"
"To ask you some questions and for you to help me out," I reply urgently, picking up the fallen stool and plop on it. "So someone opened the black door to this world right?"
"Yes and no."
"What kind of answer is that?"
"The black door was hidden in this world because something powerful was repelling the Heartless away. Whatever was stopping them must have been destroyed and therefore let them the Heartless in here. If the door had been opened we wouldn't be here so we're alright now," he briefly explains sternly.
"So what does that mean?"
"That means that if whatever was broken in this world is fixed, then the Darkness would be pushed back for a while."
"Not permanently?" I whine.
"Well Mizuki, nothing that's broken and then fixed is ever the same again. This world is now susceptible to Darkness and will always be."
"Shit." What the hell do I do now Risa? Whatever we do, it's not gonna solve the problem forever. Is that why-the future looked just like this except scarier? No way, gotta stay optimistic. "What're you going to do?" he asks curiously.
"I'm going to try to stop the Heartless from coming through," I say resolutely, making him rub his temple. "What?"
"Imagine that there's a dam and there's a crack in it. Now you take some gum and stop water from leaking out-"
"What does this have to do with anything?" I impatiently ask.
"Listen to me Mizuki. Because you plugged up the hole, another hole bursts out and you plug that other one up. And then another crack opens up-"
"So plug up all the holes!" I finish his analogy, tired of listening to the nonsense this guy's going on about. He shakes head while waving his hand in my face. "Now if you plug up all the holes, you know very well the dam will simply burst open."
"So the dam is the world?"
"Precisely."
"Aaagh! So then what do I do? If I don't find out how to close the Heartless' openings to the world then they'll come pouring in and this world wouldn't be able to sustain it. Damn it, damn it!" I run my fingernails through my hair and gulp nervously. I'm feeling hungry but food has to come after doing my job. I raise my head and stubbornly persist, "Listen Erick, when Tokyo was lost to the Darkness, I felt helpless and weak and back then-I was, wasn't I?"
"Yes," agrees Erick, his face saying "where are you going with this?"
"But now, I'm stronger and better and this is happening again. Don't you think I should fight to keep this world alive?"
"I never said otherwise, I just said that the odds were not in your favor. So as long as there's Darkness in people's hearts Mizuki, the Heartless will always be there, I told you that when you first got here. Yes, you defeating them will slow them down but it will not permanently get this world out of the clear," explains Erick matter-of-factly. He's such a black and white person, is there no hope residing within him?
"Damn it, I came to you 'cause Risa told me you would know what to do to save us but obviously this is a big waste of time," I turn for the door, eager to leave this office. Erick's hand on my shoulder stops me.
"What is Risa doing?"
"Well, she said she was gonna find the source of the Heartless." He snorts, and then sits down on the side of his desk. "What? It's funny that we're actually trying to save the world while you're doing paperwork? Risa said coming here would be beneficial and it really wasn't!"
"That's not it. You and Risa remind me of when I was younger and I thought I could save my world, and be some sort of superhero. You have a lot of radical ideas in your head Mizuki and you're young so you'll think what you're doing is right and just. But if you want to give being a superhero a shot, then go for it. Find the black door and shut it, close the wormholes the Heartless are entering from but don't let the Darkness grab hold of you because it will never let you go. Never." I gulp, stroking my hair, Erick's sudden gloomy and pessimistic tone becomes a thick mist that fills me up with fear and doubt. Fear and doubt didn't stop Risa though, she's jumping straight back into the Darkness. I gotta be brave like her.
"So close the wormholes and the black door?" I make a mental note while I open the door.
"That should do it. Now if you excuse me, I'm closing the office until things are back in place again."
"Sure-"
"And Mizuki?"
"Yeah?"
"What happened to Mia?" I almost forgot about her being Don's captive. I've gotta find her too and get her out or else Don does something to her. "Don't worry about her, I'll get her out of this mess." The sky grew darker while I was inside, the Heartless are winning. I have to turn the tide of this invasion and I have the tools to do so. A stronger earthquake shakes everything suddenly-no, it's not an earthquake, an earthquake doesn't roar. I turn up the corner and I'm greeted by a humongous purple beast with a horn on its head. When it plants its foot in the chipped, cracked road, I move along the building walls while everything trembles violently. Ok Byakugan, I need you.
Opening my eyes, I hustle towards the back of the beast without it noticing me, which was glowing an eerie purple. I follow the dark outlines to its portal as it tries to bring itself into this world. Okay look for something, anything that looks like it doesn't belong besides the colossal Heartless. "Think fast, think fast, think fast," I stroke my hair repeatedly until I find something dark violet going horizontally across the portal. Without much thought, I put my hands through the portal and latch onto the stem. It feels like a tree branch there are all these white nodes filled in the stem.
Straining and biting down on my teeth, I bend the tree branch-like thing until it snaps. I pull my hands out and they're covered in some strange goo. When I return to my normal sight, the Heartless and its portal is gone, the craters in the ground are still there-whatever, I stopped the earthquakes, that's good enough. But now what?
J.G.P.