Chapter 2: Picking Up the Pieces
Something was missing; Seifer Almasy just didn't know what. After mentally clawing after whatever it was he needed to find for several minutes he gave up and shoved the nagging feeling aside. There was too much that needed doing and he'd wasted enough time as it was. Exiting the tent he shared with his two best friends, Fujin and Raijin, the blonde bully made his way past several rows of tents similar to the one he'd just left as he worked his way towards the center of what was becoming an alarmingly large refugee camp.
As Seifer approached the rather large, yet run down, manor house that was currently serving as camp headquarters, the other two members of the Twilight Disciplinary Committee separated themselves from the shadows to the left of the door and fell in step behind him. Once inside, the trio made their way through and around the rather large crowd of people it took to keep the camp running day after day towards a small office at the rear of the first floor. Knocking once, Seifer didn't bother to wait for acknowledgment before entering to face the brunette behind the massive paper strewn desk.
Squall-call me Leon, dammit!-Leonhart cut an imposing figure as he hunched over the stack of papers he was filling out in an uncharacteristically tidy hand, looking for all the world as if he'd rather be ripping them to shreds instead. Sighing as he finished yet another requisitions form, Leon leaned back in his chair and silently regarded the trio in front of him.
"So, I hear you had a run-in with some young idiots yesterday."
"Nothing we couldn't handle; just a bunch of brats blowing off some steam." Seifer replied with a shrug. "Everyone's a little on edge."
"Tell me about it. In any case, I've got you three set up for patrol again only you'll be taking the north side near where most others from Twilight Town have set themselves up. If you need anything from stores just let Selphie know and she'll take care of it. Otherwise, you are dismissed."
Nodding in acknowledgement, Seifer and his crew let themselves out of Leon's office and made their way towards the northern encampment to begin their shift patrolling for trouble. Having taken it upon themselves to roam the streets of Twilight Town looking for lowlifes and other spots of trouble, it had only been natural that they do the same here; especially when it became apparent how desperately their help was needed. Even in the midst of chaos and tragedy there were those that would happily look for any opportunity to cause mischief or exploit those around them for personal gain.
After several hours, a few new scrapes and a couple of broken bones had taken care of whatever idiots Seifer had been forced to deal with during his time on patrol. As he split from his two friends in order to report in, Seifer's mind inevitably began to wander back to the events that had led them all here. He'd been on his way home after a particularly vicious confrontation when the sky above him had suddenly turned from blue to black and the ground had begun to shake. Then, while he'd been trying to regain his balance, he saw them. They were unlike anything he could readily put a name to; inky black beings with yellow eyes that seemed to waver in front of his sight like the mirage of an oasis in the desert.
There were hundreds, thousands of them, appearing out of thin air as if conjured and Seifer had braced himself to fight what would be a futile battle when a sudden wave of vertigo had struck and he lost consciousness. When next aware of his surroundings, Seifer came to swinging, sure he'd been taken by whatever had invaded his home. When a surprised grunt betrayed that his fist had connected with a very human face, he opened his eyes to see a man slightly older than himself, with an eerily similar scar to his own, rubbing his jaw. That was how he first met Squall Leonhart. Not a very auspicious beginning but everyone has to start somewhere.
Once he'd been fed and given a change of clothes, Leon took the time to fill him in on what was going on. The beings that he'd seen invading Twilight Town were called Heartless and no one knew exactly where they came from or what they really wanted.
"The only thing we know for certain is that they seem to thoroughly enjoy killing even though they display no outward show of emotions. We have yet to truly determine what they are since every time we seem to get our hands on one, it dies before we can get any concrete information on it; it's like they have some sort of built in self destruct."
"So what are they, some kind of constructs?"
Leon shrugged. "That's just it: we don't know. We do know some things about how they operate, however. The Heartless employ 'divide and conquer' techniques in order to frighten and demoralize their opponents when they first invade any new area; that would be the vertigo you felt before you blacked out. The heartless possess a type of warp technology that allows them to transport large groups of people from one place to another at random. We aren't sure what happens to those left behind but we can guess."
Leon's face and voice were grim as he relayed this information to a rather surprised Seifer. "There doesn't even seem to be any discernable pattern to the people taken; sometimes it's just an individual, sometimes an entire family or town. Not everyone taken ends up in the same area, either. I even found an instance where every member of a five person family had ended up in separate locations thousands of miles apart from one another even though they'd been in the same room when taken." Surprisingly enough, and against the odds, the majority of Twilight Town's population had ended up in roughly xcthe same place.
There was some hope in the midst of all the impending darkness, however. The one thing the Heartless hadn't counted on was humanity's resilience and will to fight, even when faced with insurmountable odds. Bands of resistance fighters had sprung up all around Gaia and were mounting a defensive against the invaders. A fairly vast network of supply and information lines had also formed and continued to spread offering hope to those that had lost nearly everything. Slowly, very slowly, the people were fighting back and if they weren't winning, they were at least holding their own.
Once cleared for travel, Seifer had packed up the few things he owned, followed Leon to his current base of operations and joined the fight. Shortly after arriving he'd found Fujin and Raijin and the trio began doing what they could to help the resistance.
It's just not enough, though. I need to step up the weapons training in case we're suddenly attacked and I should probably have a talk with some of the engineers about p[;bolstering the defenses of the camp. I wonder if we sent out another scouting party we'd have time to salvage that abandoned rig to the west…maybe we could even…
"Seifer?"
Musings interrupted, Seifer stopped walking and looked around for the source of his name. He didn't have long to look as a short brunette walked out from between two tents and stopped in front of him. Eyes narrowed he supplied a name with the face. "Olette?"
Olette nodded and nervously began clasping and unclasping her hands. "I'm sorry to bother you; I saw you with Leon a few days ago but you looked kind of busy and I didn't want to interrupt."
Seifer nodded and, noticing the way she kept fidgeting, tried to soften his face a little. Not much, but a little. She may be one of his friends but she was still a girl. "You having trouble with anyone here? I can always point out the error of their ways."
"No," Olette shook her head, "that's not it. I just… I was wondering if you've maybe seen Hayner anywhere? He had kind of a nasty fight with Roxas before all of this happened and we thought he was still just pissed off and avoiding him but we've searched and no one seems to have seen him."
As Olette had been speaking, that nagging feeling from this morning had returned full force and Seifer was suddenly feeling a little sick. "I haven't seen him but I'm sure he's around somewhere." He has to be. "Leon keeps an updated list of everyone that has entered or left the camp; I'm sure Hayner's name is on it somewhere. I have to go report in anyway so I'll take a look at it while I'm there and let the chickenwuss know you're looking for him."
Giving him a small smile, Olette let out a relieved sigh and thanked Seifer before walking back the way she came. Seifer, in the meantime, picked up his pace and very nearly ran to the manor house. Entering Leon's office without even a cursory knock this time around he stopped with his hands on the older man's desk, which had gotten even more cluttered since this morning. "I need the list of all people who have entered or left the camp in the weeks since you found me."
Leon raised an eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. "Well hello to you too." A moment of silence, then…"I take it you have a need other than to satisfy a random curiosity." Opening the bottom left drawer of what Leon privately thought of as his personal prison, he removed a sheaf of papers with rows of names on them and passed the stack over to Seifer who immediately began scanning the pages.
When he had finished the last page he looked angry and a little alarmed. "This list can't be complete; you're missing someone."
"I assure you we're not. That list is the most up to date roster we have; it was delivered to me by Quistis this morning."
Feeling the blood drain from his face, the blonde bully sat down heavily in a nearby chair. "Not possible. He has to be here; he's too fucking irritating to…"
"I don't need a reason to fight; just looking at your face pisses me off…"
A look of concern crossed Leon's face before he stood and moved to stand by the chair Seifer currently inhabited. "Look, it's possible someone was missed; there are quite a few people here. I'll go grab a few extra hands and we'll do a quick canvas of the camp. Who are you looking for?"
"Hayner. His name is Hayner Rhodes."
Nodding, Leon exited his office, calling out names as he went. Within fifteen minutes a reasonably sized group had been assembled and was spread throughout the camp, searching for the younger teen. Whatever spark of hope there may have been in Seifer at the beginning of the search found itself extinguished a couple of hours later.
"I'm sorry, Seifer, there isn't anyone here that has seen him. No one knows where he is." Quistis looked at the scarred blonde with sympathy as he numbly stared off into the distance.
"God you really piss me off."
"SEIFER?" Fuu and Rai had come up beside him, but he wasn't paying any attention.
"I wish I'd never even fucking met you in the first place."
"I'm sure he's alright, ya know?"
"I hate even looking at you…"
"It'll be fine, you'll see." Quistis said, looking to the rest of Seifer's gang for support. "There's no real reason to worry; there are dozens of other camps in the immediate area we can send word to. I'm sure we'll be able to find him in no time at all."
"Nothing would make me happier than if you were to just disappear."
Seifer half listened as plans were made to spread Hayner's description to the nearby settlements but he couldn't even find the energy to join in. At the moment though, none of it mattered…Hayner wasn't here.
He wasn't here and Seifer didn't know where he was.
Hayner did whatever he thought of to keep himself from going crazy. Although, if he did go crazy, would he even notice? In the six months since he'd found himself alone, the young skater had explored the boundaries of his prison from edge to edge and had slowly begun coming to terms with how things would be for, most likely, the rest of his life. In the beginning, it had been hard for Hayner to even muster the energy to move; the waves of depression and panic just seemed to crash into him far too quickly for him to recover.
Eventually, though, the drive for self preservation kicked in and Hayner began to try. He started by finding himself a place to stay; as creepy as it was to just walk in and take what was someone else's home until recently, it was still necessary. Once established, he set himself a routine in order to keep himself going. Get up, get dressed, eat. Keep moving. Go tend the garden he'd started, clean up, explore more of the area. Keep moving. Eat, work out, read, maybe watch a movie, try and fix something. Keep moving. Eat, wash up, go to bed. Get up again the next day and repeat. As long as he continually told himself to keep moving, he would.
Feeling at least partially in control helped Hayner to preserve his delicate mental balance though he couldn't control everything. No matter what he did, or how exhausted he was at the end of the day, the nightmares still came. Sometimes he dreamt of the argument; sometimes he watched from the sidelines, screaming at himself to stop, to not say the things he didn't mean. In others he cried and begged for forgiveness as the people that mattered most to him turned and walked away. In the end it didn't really matter which one he saw as he tried to sleep, he always woke up crying and alone. Always fucking alone.
Seifer checked his bags one last time as he prepared to enter what would be his cabin aboard the Ifrit. After a year helping to establish a permanent settlement in place of the temporary refugee camp he'd first come to, he was finally leaving. All efforts to find Hayner in the areas surrounding the city of tents had proved in vain and he was now taking the next step in order to find the younger male. Nor was he the only one. Fuu and Rai had decided to accompany him though he'd been hesitant to ask; they had a good place here and he hated to uproot them. While he'd argued with himself over whether to ask or not, Fuu had made the decision for him: "NOT ALONE." She'd declared, arms crossed, and that was that.
Roxas, Pence and Olette were leaving as well. They'd never really settled in here and Roxas seemed to be carrying around a fair amount of guilt in regards to his missing friend. Seifer could empathize; he was hauling around a pretty heavy load himself. Both groups had agreed to head in opposite directions, hunting for any sign of the missing skater and each would contact the other if anything was found.
Walking up the gangplank into the main hold of the Ifrit, Seifer turned and waved his farewell to Leon, who would be moving onto other, harder hit areas as well. "Good luck and be careful. I'll let you know if I hear anything."
Seifer nodded his thanks and turned towards the interior as the outer doors began to close. It was going to be a long journey.
Hold on Hayner, I'm coming.
A/N- I liked a great deal of this chapter though there are parts I'm not sure I'm happy with. I did at least manage my goal of finishing the next chapter fairly quickly, however. I hope you like it and that it doesn't disappoint! Comments/critiques are always welcome.
