Hello! I decided to post this chapter a week earlier than I was planning because 1: Christmas Break! and 2: I'm almost done with fully revising everything, unlike with the other story I've been putting up! (Wildfire, if you guys haven't figured it out already)

So, here we are, back with Maria's side of the story!

Chapter 7 - Visions?

Maria looked over at one wall of the tunnel, catching sight of strange carvings in the flickering light. She leaned forward, gripping the edge of the back of the truck with her left hand so that she could get a better look.

"Hey, no time for distractions," Lea warned, pulling Maria back by her jacket.

"That looked like it might have been something important," Maria complained, pointing back at the symbols as they appeared in the headlights of the truck behind them. Absently, she pushed her glasses up her nose with her other hand and wished that she could have something to clean off the dust that had gotten on it over the course of the trip.

Lea snorted. "It could've said 'abandon all hope' or something like that for all you know." He held up a hand, and a fireball appeared, hovering above his palm. "Now, try this again, all right? You need a basic attack when we run into those Dream Eaters again."

Maria nodded, looking at the spurt of flame she was holding in her right hand. Her look turned into a glare as she envisioned the flame turning into a sphere of flickering flames.

At first, nothing happened. But then the small flame suddenly exploded into smaller spheres of light, which scattered in all directions, hitting into the back of the cab and the walls on either side.

Maria let out an annoyed groan. "I'm never going to get a Fire Sphere at this rate."

"You'll get it. It's just that you don't have the pressure of learning while going after Heartless." Lea smirked. "Besides, if that doesn't work, that can always work as an attack if you can't use anything else."

"Yeah, but wouldn't it hurt the people I've sided with as well as the Dream Eaters?"

Lea frowned slightly, then shook his head. "Na. That's not going to happen."

"How do you even know? It's not like there's some sort of spell that keeps it from happening, is there?" Maria frowned, then when she saw the look on Lea's face, she blinked in surprise. "There is a spell."

"Yeah," the redhead replied with a nod. "It's automatic, though."

"So I don't have to cast it?"

"Nah. The only casting you're going to be doing is the fire stuff. Now let's try this again."

Maria let out a sigh and started to form another spurt of flame when the caravan came to a stop. Quickly snuffing out her flame, Maria looked around in order to try and see why the trucks had stopped.

Up ahead, the path split in two as the tunnel expanded into a cavern, with tunnels leading out in upward directions. Maria caught sight of Milo climbing out of the little white car that Milo's drill had been towing - he had been officially told that he could not drive in front of he caravan early on.

As the spindly scholar made his way towards the crossroads ahead and paged through his book, Maria felt her head start throbbing. Closing her eyes, she caught sight of something slipping through her mind: a strange, green, bug-like monster coming out of a tunnel and snarling at Mole's drill, causing it to screech to a stop.

Crawling over the crates in the back of the truck, Maria reached the cab and rapped on the back window.

Audrey threw the window open and glared back at Maria. "What do you want?"
"When Mole's drill starts to go forward, if he takes the tunnel on the left, don't follow him," Maria stated. This brought a look of confusion and surprise from Lea.

Audrey frowned. "And why not?"

"If Milo points in that direction, you'll see." Maria leaned back and sat down on a crate, moving her attention to the fork in the tunnel up ahead.

Audrey gave Maria a weird look, then turned back to face the truck in front of her, muttering something in Spanish under her breath.

Lea grabbed Maria's arm from behind her. "I thought you said you didn't know what was going to happen in the future."

Maria looked back at him. "I've started to get these visions, okay? Right before-"

The girl was cut off with a loud noise that caused the pair to look over at the split ahead of them.

Mole's drill and the other trucks that had gone ahead had been forced to stop short when a giant, bug-like monster had come out and complained loudly about an intruder approaching its territory.

Milo jumped upon seeing the bug-monster, then looked at his book for a moment before cautiously flipping the book and pointing nervously in the other direction.

In the truck cab, Audrey let out a loud exclamation and turned around sharply in order to glare at Maria. When the girl gave a helpless shrug, the mechanic growled and turned around again, once again muttering in Spanish.

"You were saying?" Lea asked, looking over at Maria with a curious expression.

Maria let out a sigh. "Right before the event happens, I've gotten a glimpse. I saw the Leviathan right before it took out the sub, for instance."

Lea frowned. "I haven't heard about anything like that happening before."

Maria shrugged again. "I won't be able to help you figure out how. I'm just as clueless about this ability as you are. I never even knew that I could do this kind of thing until I got here!"

"Yeah, I gathered that. But the question is, how much can you do?" Lea poked Maria in the chest. "You can't just throw fire and see the future. There's got to be something else that's going on with you."

"Well, yeah, but what? It's not like I can go through some sort of test right in the middle of this expedition." Maria gave Lea a slightly suspicious look. "Unless there is a test."

"Not that I'm aware of. I'm still new to this whole Keyblade wielding thing."

Up ahead, Mole's drill had finally - and successfully - backed up from the insect's tunnel. The drill turned and started forward again, with Milo scrambling into his little white car before it could get too far. Gradually, the rest of the caravan started to follow.

"So, I've kind of been meaning to ask," Lea spoke up as Audrey started the truck's movement. "What's your world like?"

Maria blinked. "My world?" She became a little embarrassed. "Well, there's not really much to tell."

"Tell it anyway," Lea replied. He shifted a little, trying to make himself a little more comfortable among the crates.

"Well, it's a lot like this world, if you were able to see anything that was up there." Maria pointed up at the tunnel's ceiling, hinting at what was far above them. "One difference, though, is that the year's 2012, not sometime in the 1940s. [a/n: I'm only saying that this is a year behind because of events that take place later] The technology we have at our fingertips is a whole lot better than what they've got now, and we can do things this world can't." Maria let out a sigh, her head and shoulders sagging. "But we've got our problems, too - wars in other countries and economic difficulties being the biggest ones. It's gotten to be pretty bad for a lot of people."

"Can you do anything about it?"

Maria looked over at Lea and shook her head. "Not unless I turn eighteen two years earlier than I'm supposed to. And that's definitely not going to happen unless I get stuck in a time warp or something." A sad smile crept across the girl's face before she moved her gaze to the back of the truck's cab. Maria tucked her knees up to her chin.

Lea gave Maria a curious look. "Sounds like your not exactly too fond of your world."

"Oh, don't get me wrong - it's a nice world, to be sure, but it just has problems in it like everybody else's." Maria looked back at Lea with a slight smirk. "Thing is, though, that a lot of people really like to escape reality in our world, so they make things that let us pretend we're on another world. I guess they didn't realize that the worlds they thought they had made up were actually real ones." She let out a slight chuckle, but then a frown appeared on her face. "See, that's one thing I don't understand about this whole thing: how in the world - no, universe - did the worlds that I'm aware of turn out to be real? Cartoons and stuff was never thought to actually exist anywhere outside the TV and a person's imagination."

Lea scratched his head, making his already messy hair even more so. "Well, Yen Sid knew about other worlds. It could have something to do with that. Maybe on a much larger scale, though..."

Maria shrugged. "I'll figure it out eventually."

Time Break

Maria sat quietly at the campfire with the other members of the group as a short, old man with what sounded like a Southern accent went around from group of people to group of people, handing out glops of some sort of chunky stew.

Maria didn't like the smell of it. There were some things that she could handle, but Cookie's cooking was probably beyond that limit.

"So, kid," Vinny stated, looking over at Maria from across the campfire. "I heard that you've got a few tricks up your sleeve like tall, dark, and snarky over there." He motioned with his fork over in the direction of Lea, who was sitting with another group of the crew, laughing and joking with them.

Maria became a little hesitant at the mentioning of some sort of connection between her and Lea. "Uh...maybe? Why?"

"You don't seem ta be as eager as he is to show off." Vinny motioned to Lea again, who was making lazy circles while a stream of fire - which looked a lot like a dragon - flew above the camp fire he was sitting at before it dissipated with a flash and the sound of what might have been wood cracking.

"I'm still pretty new to what I can do," Maria admitted, looking embarrassed and nervous.

"Kid, this whole thing is new to all of us," Audrey spoke up from where she sat next to Vinny. "Sure, we've been to Iceland to look for some book, but Atlantis?" She shook her head. "That old man's crazier than I thought."

"Oh, I wouldn't know about that," Maria responded with a slightly mysterious smile as she thought back to Milo's first encounter with Mr. Whitmore. "I think he's actually pretty cool."

"How would you know?" Audrey asked, her eyes narrowing in suspicion.

Maria froze, her eyes widening upon realizing what she had just let slip. "Uh...I heard a lot about him from Lea?"

Vinny and Audrey gave each other varying degrees of suspicious looks.

"There's something about you and Lea that doesn't fit with everything else," Audrey remarked.

"There's more than meets the eye to the both of you," Vinny added, waving his fork around.

For some reason, those words sent chills up and down Maria's spine, but the feeling was gone in an instant.

"I'm getting the feeling that a lot of people would say that about anybody," Maria stated carefully. "Even if they can't do what Lea and I can."

Audrey snorted. "Yeah, right."

Maria shrugged. "Big things come in small packages. Sometimes, people will surprise you." With that, she got to her feet, leaving the untouched tray of Cookie's goop behind as she started to make her way towards the row of tents.

"Hey!"

Maria turned as Lea ran over, and she gave him a curious look.

"I saw that you didn't like that stuff," Lea said, jabbing his thumb back in the direction of the campfire Maria had been sitting at. A certain small, round figure had found Maria's tray and was starting to attack it vigorously.

Maria gave a dry smile. "I didn't even dare to try it. That stuff doesn't exactly look appetizing."

"Yeah, I kinda figured." Lea produced a small bottle from out of nowhere and gave it to Maria. "Here. This might taste a little better than that other stuff."

Maria frowned, then took the bottle and looked its glowing blue contents over with a curious expression. "What is it?"

"Something that Sora managed to mix up some time ago," Lea explained. "He said something about not being able to eat all the time and that this stuff works pretty well as a replacement or something. Lasts about a week."

Maria's eyebrows arched in surprise as she looked down at the little bottle. The glowing blue liquid inside did send shivers down her spine, but they weren't enough to cause her to doubt Lea's words.

"Well, may as well give it a try," Maria noted. She removed the cork from the top of the bottle and promptly swallowed its contents.

The contents of the bottle felt cold and hot at the exact same time as the liquid slid down her throat with the viscosity of some sort of fruit juice. Maria's eyes widened when she realized the stuff tasted a lot like blue Gatorade for some reason.

When Maria had finished swallowing the potion, she looked down at the empty bottle for a moment before handing it back to Lea, saying, "Wow. Didn't expect it to taste like something from my world."

Lea looked down at the bottle in his hand in surprise. "Really?" He looked back at Maria with a curious expression. "What did it taste like?"

"An energy drink that tasted a lot like some sort of berry."

With a shrug, Maria turned around and started for the tents, leaving Lea standing alonew blinking in confusion.

Space Break

A figure stumbled out of a portal, which closed shut behind him as he looked around at his new surroundings. Once the figure had finished looking around the area, he started forward with determined steps, still looking around with a critical eye.

"All right, Maria," the figure muttered. "Where are you?"

And that's it! See you guys later with a new chapter!