"Get her on the table!" Shouted Aurora.
The moogles, small creatures covered in white fur sporting bat wings and a red ball hanging just above their head, flew back as the group of girls piled into the item shop. Snow White and Ariel held a bleeding Belle between them.
"Close the door, Alice!" Screamed Kairi. She brought her keyblade down on the head of a heartless. The darkness gave way to a mist of green and blue. Alice leaned into the door with all of her small weight. Her feet slipped on the blood on the floor and the door allowed three more heartless in before the door was closed.
"Kairi! Help!" Jasmine fell back from the table as the three heartless poured into the table where Belle lay. "Stop them!"
"My leg! Get them off my leg!" Belle pleaded with the room, but only Kairi's keyblade had any hope of dispatching the intruders. When the last heartless exploded it revealed the exposed bone of Belle's leg eaten almost up to the knee.
"When did they turn feral?" Asked Ariel. Her dress was slowly being stained by Belle as her hands clamped around the thigh to keep the princess in yellow from passing out. Of all the princesses of heart, she probably had the most experience with the harsh realities of nature. Not all is clear blue under the sea.
"Sora, Goofy, and Donald went after Ansem and then everything went to hell." Kairi dropped the keyblade and it disappeared before it hit the ground. Aurora tied a tourniquet around Belle's leg. Ariel relaxed her grip.
"When are they coming back?" asked Alice. She double checked the lock on the door. The heartless banged and clawed at the door. Tiny hands reached under door to try and slide in. A light flashed and the heartless' advance was repelled by a barrier.
"I don't know. I don't even know where Cid is. I thought other people lived in this town. Where are they?" asked Kairi. No one had an answer. Belle was shrieking in pain.
"I can't take much more of that screaming." Snow White said through gritted teeth.
"Sorry, Snow." Belle reached out and took Snow White's hand in her own. Her grip tightened so hard that Snow's pale skin turned blue beneath the grip. "Heartless ate my FUCKING LEG! Sorry I can't suffer in silence like your little forest creature friends!"
"Ow! Let go!" Snow yanked her hand out of Belle's weakening grasp.
"Kairi, Alice, and Snow. Check the rest of the shop to make sure everything is locked up. I don't want any more surprises," said Aurora. There was ice in her voice when she said Snow. Enough to send a shiver down the princess's spine. The three pulled down the ladder and went upstairs without a word.
"I am going to kick her with my good leg. I swear," moaned Belle. She turned onto her side, wetting the rest of her dress's skirt in her own pool of blood. Belle was beyond caring.
"Just focus on staying awake," said Jasmine. Turning to Ariel, she asked, "Can you take the stuffing out of any cushion you can find? We'll use it as gauze."
The room was silent except for the labored breathing of the daughter of an inventor.
"What are we doing?" The girls turned to look at the woman who had asked the question so softly. Aurora was looking down at her rust colored hands before seeing the other girl's attention had turned to her. "I said that out loud, didn't I?"
Upstairs
"Kairi, can I ask you a question?" Alice jiggled the handle to a door to check if it would open. It had only a little give. The item shop was built on a slope, uneven as it was, and the back door lead out to the ground floor of that level. It offered little protection from the myriad of heartless banging on the walls.
"What is it?" The keyblade wielder looked at the blond girl who didn't seem much older than her.
"I thought there was only one keyblade wielder. My memories are hazy, from the spell Maleficent had us under, but I remember your friends Sora and Riku fighting over who could hold the keyblade. Why do you have it?"
Kairi looked down at her hand and tightened it slightly. The keyblade materialized in her grip before she could close her hand. Its power hummed in her grip. She could feel the weight and impression the previous two owners left on the rounded blade. It felt like she was holding her friends. "I can feel them in the keyblade when I hold it, but I can't feel them in my heart."
"Maybe they lost," said Snow White. She stood by the ladder with her arms crossed and her back to the wall. Her black hair was a mess of tangles from her escape. "That could be why the Heartless are going crazy."
"I don't want to believe that," said Kairi. She bit down on her lip. "If they lost I would have felt it. It just feels like they are gone. I've never felt this before."
Downstairs
Ariel poked the red fluffy ball hanging above the head of the moogle. It swayed back and forth independent of the slow bobbing of the moogle as its wings flapped to keep it airborne. Otherwise it remained silently watching. It was one of several scattered throughout the room. Ariel had tried talking to each one. Each one had made a 'kupo' sound and hovered there. She was fascinated by how closely the red of the moogle matched the red of her own hair.
"I don't want to be 'that girl' but this place is pretty sparse. I grew up in a palace, but whenever I went out to the bazaar they would always be packed to the brim with goods. This place is barren," said Jasmine.
The bottom floor of the item shop had several glass display cases. All of them were empty. Aurora looked under the table they had placed Belle on and saw the same was true for all the shelves there as well. "Nothing here either."
"Finally, a shopping trip I can afford." Belle now lay on the couch with one leg planted on the floor and the other propped up over the edge of the lift to keep it elevated. She forced out a small laugh, "Really? No one thought that was funny? Not even a laugh from the clock?"
"Is she going to be ok?" Asked Ariel.
"She is ok enough to hear you talk about her," replied Belle. She tried to prop herself up on an arm to get a look at the land bound ocean princess, but a surge of pain caused her to fall back and grab her leg. "Damn it that hurts."
"Fire!" Aurora put both of her hands in front of her and lined them up with the fireplace that stood next to the couches. A ball of flame spouted from her hands and lit the dry logs.
"Neat trick," said Jasmine.
"It helps to grow up with fairy god mothers."
"And here I thought I was going to die in this shivering cold," said Belle. She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. "I think I know what comes next. You're going to cauterize my leg, aren't you?"
"You are very well read. Yes. To stop the bleeding I need to close the wound," answered Aurora.
"How do you 'cauterize' a wound?" asked Ariel. A life time under water had not prepared her for anything dealing with fire.
"You are about to find out. I'm going to need you two to hold Belle still." Jasmine and Ariel went to Belle. Ariel's eyes grew wide when Aurora grabbed one of the burning logs from the fire place.
Upstairs
"There it is again! Every time I see a heartless go flat and try to get in, there's some kind of barrier that keeps them out," said Alice. She pointed to the window where a teeming mass of heartless knocked against the glass with ineffective hands.
"I think we are doing it," said Kairi. "We are the 7 princesses of Heart. Maybe being together puts up a barrier around the shop?" She pressed her face up against the glass of the window. The black mass parted and a blue heartless stared back at her. It slammed its head against the glass again and again as the other heartless crowded back around it. "I can't feel any vibrations through the glass."
All the girls heard Belle's scream. Kairi fell back from window with a gasp of her own. The keyblade appeared in her hand. Clear changed to white to blue to red and to black as the barrier outside weakened. Lights in the shop dimmed for only a brief moment then returned to full force when the barrier cycled back to a clear shield.
All three climbed down the ladder. Snow white stepped off the final wrung and immediately brought her hand to cover her mouth and nose. Kairi jumped off half way to land next to her. Alice was the last to climb off. She was overpowered by the smell of burning flesh and wood. Unable to help herself, she doubled over and wretched.
Belle lay motionless on the couch. Smoke rose from where her leg ended. Aurora dropped the extinguished log to the floor.
Seven were now six.