A big thanks to all the review patrons of this story. Call me an attention whore, but postitive words really help me get enthusiastic about writing, especially with long pieces like this. vv Pretty soon I'll be off in the big scary world of novel-writing and I won't get a nice pat on the back for every chapter completed, but hopefully that time won't carry the same stress as these highschool years.
Still haven't had anyone try to guess Marluxia's form. Really guys, don't the pink blades give it away?
I still don't own anything, but at the very least I wish I could say something clever about not owning anything. Oh well, maybe next chapter.
Chapter Two: Into the Dark Black Forest
The woods seemed to stretch on forever, Vexen kept walking forward since he didn't want to back-trace his steps. 'If I go back there,' he thought, 'I'll be forced to marry that loathsome man my fool of a father picked out for me. Did he not even bother to do a background check for Luxord, or did he just not care?' That thought made Vexen a little uneasy. Sure he gave his father many a headache over the years, but he didn't want to think that his own father would get on his knees and beg the first scoundrel to come to his door to marry his only son. And for six-hundred-thousand munny! That was no dowry, that was a bribe. Vexen sighed. So, he was worth so little that any future husband of his had to be compensated for the drudgery of having him as a mate?
"No matter," he said harshly to himself, "I'm not going back. No more of their intolerance, their disrespect, or their ignorance! I'll find somewhere else to live." He nodded in firm resolve, then continued his trek through the thick woods. A few minutes later, he stopped and thought aloud, "But where am I going? The forest has to end sometime, but then where will I be?" He pulled out Door to Darkness and flipped through to find everything that was listed about Professor Xehanort. "He died about fifty years ago, but his hometown and alma mater must still be standing." The book said briefly:
Little is known about Professor Xehanort. Not only is his place of birth a mystery but so is his first name.
Vexen groaned.
Professor Xehanort studied metaphysics and psychology in the prestigious Hollow Bastion University.
"That's a start..." Vexen said, wondering where Hollow Bastion was.
During his studies, he became interested in the way the 'heart' worked, and thus passionately studied all that he could about human emotions and their impact on the individual, the community, and the world. Immediately after he graduated from the university he became a teacher on its staff. His studies were published in Door to Darkness, the only book of his ever published.
The young man sighed. "I know that," he muttered, "but what about locations? Dates?"
After his book was published, there were many people offended by the controversy of his work, as well as the cynical view that human hearts begin and end in darkness. He was accused of insanity and was thrown into a psychiatric ward on campus for his own students to study and experiment on him.
Vexen twitched.
During this time, Xehanort began work on a second book entitled Kingdom Hearts. Before its completion, it was found, confiscated, and destroyed, thus lost to us forever. In retaliation, Xehanort broke free of his cell and burned down the entire university, he himself perished in the fire.
The blond shut the book, put it back in his bag, and resolved to find a new plan.
Without a general idea of where he was headed, Vexen continued on his straightforward path, wondering what he could do. There wasn't anything around him, just trees above his head and mud beneath his feet. He didn't like mud. The only songbirds to behold were crows, who occasionally passed overhead, and there were few animals on the ground or in the trees. Which was fine with him, he didn't like animals that weren't being scrutinized by him or were strictly domesticated, so the fewer the better. Wild animals made him...nervous. As he squelched through the mud and tried to find some sort of bearing, he found himself listening acutely for the sound of anything that could be hidden in the trees. Each time he turned to look because a foreign noise startled him, it was really some pesky squirrel or rabbit.
Suddenly a pair of chipmunks jumped in front of Vexen's path, which caused him to stumble and fall back on a rock and hit his head against a tree. That ensued a splitting headache and a pain in his leg; when he looked to inspect it, he found the edge of the rock had made a long cut that was gushing blood. If he were back home, he would have had his father and housekeeper on stand-by with a first aid kit. If he were back home, he also would have gotten uke-points for fainting.
When he came to, the wound was still there but the sun was not. Vexen cursed at his own foolishness, knowing he needed to find a way to bandage the wound before too much blood was lost, and tore off some of the material on his pants leg to stop the blood flow. He searched around for a large stick to lean on, but couldn't find anything that was not either too light, to heavy, or covered in bugs. He limped through the dark forest tired, dirty, and injured until he came across a small stream that cut across the forest floor. 'Finally, a bit of luck!' he thought as he sat by the edge and drank the cold water. He cleaned the sweat off his face, then proceeded to unwrap his make-shift bandage and clean the blood. Luckily, his leg was just scraped up a bit, he was a bit of a slow healer but it wasn't a grave injury, it just hurt a lot. Vexen considered taking a bath in the cold water, but instead removed Door to Darkness and began to read under the fractured light of the full moon.
By the time he reached the third chapter, he began to hear noises. He forced himself not to hear the rustle of the leaves on the all but windless night, and every time he began to think about looking around, he calmed himself with more reading. His leg was still hurting, so Vexen looked down to check the bandages and found the blood was leaking though and landing in the river. He put his book away and ripped off more material to stop the blood flow, by now he was feeling very tired and was very hungry. As he tied the new material on, he heard noises again. This time, to put his worries at rest and see that there was, in fact, nothing to be frightened over, he looked up and across the river, only to see something looking back. A great many somethings. A great many hungry somethings, known to a calm Vexen as lupes canis, known to a frantic Vexen as big trouble.
He put himself on auto-pilot and ran as fast as he could, holding his bag to him and trying not to scream in terror. The wolves followed, barking loudly and howling to the thrill of the hunt. Vexen did not think hunting was thrilling from his standpoint. He forced his legs to carry him as fast as they could go without stopping while he searched his mind for anything that could be used out of this situation.
'I am a human, humans can think, humans are not prey because they can think. What do I know about wolves? There was something I read about how wolves hunt! Think! Think! Wolves hunt in packs, they can run up to sixty -five kilometers per hour in a chase and they pursue prey for... a thousand meters! I just need to keep running long enough and not trip
He had almost tripped over an above ground tree root, which only helped the wolves to gain. He sprinted off again, hoping he was near a thousand meters.
What else?! There was something important... come on Vexen, you've got to remember! Oh right! Wolves hunt by surrounding their prey and cutting off their escape!
A giant carnivore jumped in front of Vexen, who yelped and swung his bag around to smack the predator's snout before darting off in another direction. His leg was killing him, his energy was draining, he didn't know how much longer he would have to evade them or how soon he would simply collapse. In the distance, he saw a towering structure, an obscure place in the distance that was a ruin humans at one time inhabited. He ran to it, pushing himself for the final stretch of the chase, only to confront a gate; iron, tall, and chained. Vexen looked behind him to see that the wolves were starting to congregate and advance towards him. Vexen rattled the gates, and forced the doors to open as much as the chain would allow and slid through. He stood back while the wolves attempted to chew and bash at the gates, then give up and walk away.
Vexen breathed deeply and slowly, then approached the structure; a giant time-worn palace, overgrown with ivy and ominously decaying. The front door gave way easily (it fell over when he pushed it), and when Vexen stepped through the air was different (polluted by dust) and eerily uninhabited (except for the spiders and the mice). He trudged through the place, entering a desecrated throne room, or a foyer of some sort, filled with broken furniture and shattered decorations. A chandelier lay in pieces on the floor, a massive throne was hacked apart, a mirror looked like it had been hit with a heavy object. Most of the other rooms were undamaged except by time; like the sitting room that was perfectly preserved save for the dust. There was a large couch against the wall, which Vexen collapsed onto. Above him was a portrait; a young man with pink hair sat regally in a garden, next to his two closest and most trusted friends.
He woke up well into the next day, and though his first instinct was to look for something to eat, he found after searching through the kitchens that everything was well past its expiration date. But since Vexen was both starving and resourceful, he decided to check the gardens to see if there were any edible things growing, confident in his ability to recognize all the things that wouldn't poison him. He found his way out of the castle and stumbled into the massive gardens. It was hardly recognizable through all of the overgrown weeds and poorly kept plant-life, but it was a garden nonetheless. Vexen searched through strangled flowers and (occupied) undergrowth until he came across a godsend in the form of a ripe peach tree, which he devoured the fruits of so quickly he almost choked on a pit. But with his hunger finally gone, he was free to look about the place at his leisure.
"I wonder what happened here that caused everyone to leave?" he asked himself, "and why is there a castle in the middle of the forest that has gone unnoticed by everyone? Surely something this big couldn't have just vanished out of history forever..."
This he pondered while he explored the rest of the gardens. He noticed a large patio where many almost untouched pieces of furniture were spread out. "I suppose I could live here until I figure out something to do... I'm sure all I need is to dust a few of the rooms and tend to some of the edible plants to survive here..."
He fell over a weed-covered object on the ground, and when he tried to brush away the plants he cut his finger (he successfully fought the urge to put the dirty bloody finger in his mouth and instead tore off a bit of sleeve to wrap it with).
"It's a blade..." he muttered as he (carefully) removed the weeds from the object, "...there's a...giant...pink...blade on the ground. How strange, I wonder what it's for?"
When he cleared it all away, he noticed that the pink blade connected to a moss covered piece of iron. He raised his eyebrow and shrugged, "If this is a statue then I have no clue what it's supposed to be, but maybe it will make sense after all these intrusive weeds have been cleared." And clear them he did. This action helped Vexen uncover a metallic structure which included another scythe, a 'stinger' of some sort connected to a main body, which led up to what served as a 'head' which was composed of a long, beak-like protruding piece of iron and a carefully sculpted humanoid face hidden beneath a hood. "Peculiar..." he commented, "it still makes no sense, but it's interesting. And very rusty. I wonder what it was for?" He looked up and said, "Oh, I missed one" as he spotted a large pink flower on top of the...thing.
Exerting much more energy and many more tries than Vexen would have liked, he climbed up the metal contraption to where the flower was. He realized, when he clambered on top of the machine, that he had no idea what kind of flower it was. "I'd classify it as a rose," he mused, "but I've never seen a rose this big. If only I had my journal I could take notes on this..." he reached out and stroked the enormous rose-bud, and it shuddered. "It's touch-sensitive? Remarkable!" he exclaimed with discovery on his mind. Unfortunately for Vexen, but as was bound to happen, the flower was not the only thing to move, seeing as the rose happened to be connected to the 'peculiar metal device', the 'device' was rather 'touch-sensitive' as well. And so it moved, right under the hapless Vexen. Not just so unlucky that his new find turned into a nightmare, but that he actually fell off the machine and landed in front of the rising, floating metal-flower beast as it raised its scythes into the air. Vexen's throat hurt from screaming and his legs hurt from running all of last night. He froze up as the unnatural creature moved its head with a loud screeching noise and opened its metal eyelids more loudly and slowly than what was natural for eyelids. It looked down at Vexen. Vexen looked up at it.
"What, in the name of logic and common sense is this?" Vexen said, half in shock, half in scientific astonishment.
"This," the creature responded while its pink blades tapped the main body, "is the by-product of sheer foolishness. You are trespassing and I demand to know why."
Vexen hated his life. He hated how the father he hated wanted him to marry a man he hated which led him into an unmanned environment that he hated filled with mud and chipmunks which he hated and wolves that he despised who chased him to a castle filled with dust, which he hated, and then into the gardens where he was confronted with a detestable mecha-flora monster who held the power of speech and a pair of pink instruments of death. He hated how, against his dignity and perseverance and strength of mind, he managed to find himself in situations he simply could not handle without loosing consciousness.
Thus, he fainted. Again. Dignity be damned, he fell into darkness with the image of the rusted metal face under the blinding sun etched in his brain.
...I'm sure Vexen faints some of the time. Not ALL the time, mind you, but I'm sure there are a good number of us that faint when they bleed profusely or see monsterous steel-plated creatures. I know I would for the second one.
Vexen's dignity will make a comeback in the next chapter! Maybe.
