The Tale of the Lost

PandaShadow

Enchanting Eyes and Scorching Scars

A/N: Hello again. It is nice to see you. Thanks to my two lovely reviewers for sticking around even through my unsatisfying chapter eight! I am now going to shamelessly advertise before never speaking of this again (until chapter 18). Do you like Yu Yu Hakusho? Do you have an affinity for either Kurama or Hiei? Do you like continuation stories that don't just follow Yusuke? Do you think my writing style is successful? If so, you should hop on over to my profile and check out my newest story, Heart of Life: Alea Iacta Est. It is both Kurama/OC and Hiei/OC, though when it comes to the latter, you have to squint. A lot. But there are two more stories following that one where the squinting becomes unnecessary.

So you should read it.

On a different note, I am hoping this chapter will be less painful for me than the last one. I apologize if it ever seems like there has been a shift in my writing style. Or if I forget that my characters can see. I'm really used to not describing physical surroundings right now. Because my OC is blind in my other story.

Disclaimer: I do not own anything Kingdom Hearts. Don't steal Meera or my plot or Evelynn or Miranda or any of the other people not from KH. I would jump off of my roof into a nose.

And even though this chapter is currently unbeta'd, I'd still like to send a shout-out to my friend, beta, and co-author for Heart of Life, ArmadillloHunter!

Enjoy!


Meera took a sip of the carbonated beverage in her hand, almost choking on the bubbles that seemed to go up her nose. Was it really necessary to distract herself so thoroughly? Apparently so. Riku was sitting across from her, staring at some spot in the table he seemed to find especially interesting, and Sora and Kairi were happily chatting the day away next to them. Was this a truce? Ignoring someone?

"If we're being realistic," she heard Kairi say, "there's no way we can go to every single world the two of you have ever visited and ask every single person if they've noticed anything strange going on." Meera silently agreed. She imagined that would probably take years. Granted, she wasn't sure just how many worlds Sora and Riku had been to total. Probably a lot.

"Well, yeah," Sora agreed, leaning forward, "but what else are we supposed to do? The King didn't give us any other leads, and I certainly don't know where else to start." Meera again understood his point. Whether or not she knew anything about the situation that she wasn't sharing, the brown-haired leader of their group had no other place to begin. Did that guilt her into telling them everything she knew about the situation? Absolutely not. There was no way it would be that relevant to the situation at hand.

The red-head reached her hand down to her side, fumbling with the package she had picked up the day before. After inspecting it thoroughly, she came to the conclusion that it was some strange mirror. Around the outside of it was a strange language that she couldn't read, yet some part of her seemed to know what it meant. It essentially told her that the mirror could be used for her own protection, and also to travel "home." Wherever that was.

Riku, across from her, was leaning back in his seat, staring blankly at the ceiling. He hadn't even bothered trying to tune into Sora and Kairi's conversation; he had a much more important matter on his hands. 'I do not,' he thought then, crinkling his nose. 'The reasoning behind Meera's issues with me is not more important than saving innocent lives from this Zopyris guy.' He sighed and sunk a little further into his seat.

A good five minutes of banter between Sora and Kairi later, a blonde waitress came up to the table. The expression on her face was one of boredom, and she was loudly chewing gum. Her green eyes disdainfully passed over the teens until they reached Riku – who still was not paying attention. "Do y'all want to order any food?" she asked, her eyes locked onto the silver-haired boy's frame.

Sora and Kairi looked up, startled that they hadn't noticed her presence until she spoke. Riku briefly glanced at her, oblivious to her obvious attraction to him, before shaking his head and refocusing his gaze on the ceiling. Meera's grey eyes darted back and forth between the two, taking in the situation at hand. She lightly shook her head as well, both to clear it and to signify that she also didn't want any food.

"I'll have the soup of the day," Kairi said. Sora just shrugged and leaned back a bit in his chair. After the waitress wrote down Kairi's order, she walked away with one last glance at Riku. Said silver-haired teen was lost in his own thoughts

'She really does seem to hate me, even with this truce,' he thought, scrutinizing a glittery speck on the ceiling. 'I shouldn't be so bothered by it. Maybe she just hates everyone. She isn't particularly friendly.' He could hear the murmur of Sora and Kairi's conversation going into one ear, but their words didn't actually reach his mind.

Meera, on the other hand, was still paying attention even while focused on her own problems. "It's not like they have phones we can call or something," Sora pointed out. Meera pulled the mirror from her pocket, tracing her fingers along the edges where the strange language was engraved.

"Well, yeah," Kairi conceded, "but there must be some way to get them all in one place at one time."

'Maybe I should tell them,' the red-head thought. 'Maybe Lea is right. It would be better for them to find out from me instead of him. He could twist what happened. And I don't want them to think there was anything more going on than there actually was.'

Riku leaned forward, resting his head on his fist. 'No, that can't be it. She was friends with Cloud, and at least acquaintances with the other people in Radiant Garden. And she gets along perfectly well with Sora and Kairi. It really is just me,' he mused. Generally, it didn't make much sense to him. Even before he had said a word to her, she had already seemed to hate him. It wasn't as though they had met before, and he was pretty sure he didn't have a Nobody like Sora and Kairi did. So what was it? Some other vague recognition?

The waitress took that moment to return to the four teens with Kairi's soup. She did not, however, leave once she placed the bowl on the table. "Are the four of y'all on a double date or something?" What was she doing? Meera was relatively certain waitresses weren't supposed to encroach on the personal lives of the customers. She could have been wrong, though.

"No!" all four of them exclaimed, a different emotion in their voice. Sora's held nervousness, as though he did think of it as a double date – or a normal date – but didn't want anyone to know. Kairi's voice held embarrassment, as though she had been caught stealing a slice of someone else's birthday cake. Riku's voice was defensive, as though she had accused him of some horrible misdeed. Meera's voice was panicked. She certainly didn't want anyone thinking something was going on between her and Riku, of all people.

The waitress looked relieved and kept her green eyes on Riku. "Great to know. Can I get anything else for anyone?" she asked with a wink. Meera raised an eyebrow. The silver-haired teen still seemed to be unaware of the obvious flirting in his direction. Was he that dense?

"No thanks," Sora responded. The waitress pouted before turning and leaving again. Was she really that desperate? Apparently so. Meera didn't understand what she could see in Riku – it wasn't like his eyes were enchanting, or his hair a slightly exotic, abnormal color. He wasn't even charming.

"Do you have any ideas?" Kairi asked the two, eating a spoonful of soup. Meera stared at her with wide eyes, and Riku looked equally startled.

"For what?" he asked.

"Have you really not been paying attention at all?" she asked, exasperated. He sheepishly averted his gaze, staring out the window. "We're trying to think of a way more time-efficient to talk to everyone than going to each and every world. Are you really that out of it?" He didn't answer. Kairi sighed and turned to Meera. "What about you?"

"I don't know much about traveling to worlds," she began, "but I don't know. If there isn't some kind of communication other than just traveling, I don't see how there's anything else we can do." Except, she told herself, if she just told them what she knew. What if it was the answer to all of their problems? No, it couldn't be. There was absolutely no way it was all about her.

"Exactly," Sora said. "So we just have to keep trying until someone knows something. There's nothing else we can do."

"Nothing else you can do about what?"

All four teens jumped as the same waitress piped into their conversation from a little behind their table. What was she doing, stalking them? Meera looked away from her and focused her attention back onto the mirror in her hands. A bit of the light from the ceiling reflected off of its surface. She didn't know what to do. What if it was about her? Was she putting all of them in danger by not telling them?

"Well, you see," Sora began awkwardly, scratching his head, "we have a whole lot of friends. And we haven't seen them in a while. And we miss them. And they all live really, really far apart from each other. But we can't figure out a way to get them all together in one place."

The waitress scrunched her eyebrows together, still chewing on a wad of gum. "Well that's easy," she said. "Just throw a really big party somewhere centralized. It is almost Christmas, after all."

"Oh," Kairi said. Sora seemed too surprised to respond, Riku was tilting his head as though finally half-paying attention, and Meera was just annoyed that she hadn't thought of such a simple solution first. "I do suppose that would make sense."

"Not a problem," the waitress commented with a smile on her face. "Am I invited?" she asked, again staring longingly at Riku. Sora chuckled nervously, and Meera assumed it was because he wasn't allowed to tell normal people about how there were other worlds; it would upset the balance.

"Well, the most central place isn't really somewhere that I think you could reach easily," the brown-haired boy explained. The blonde pouted before groaning and walking away. As helpful as she had been, Meera was glad she left. The fact that she had been listening in on their conversation, and not even to take their orders of food, made her uncomfortable enough. And then she just happened to have a great idea. And, for some strange reason, she was infatuated with Riku. Riku! It made no sense.

'Maybe if he dyed his hair, got different color-contacts, and a bit of plastic surgery, he wouldn't bother me as much. And smoked so much that his voice sounded completely different. That could work,' she thought. 'No, that's no way to deal with my problems. They are not the same person. They are not the same person.'

"So Sora," Kairi began, "what would you say is the most central place?" she asked, an eyebrow raised. The boy crinkled his nose in thought. There wasn't really a world that was central – other than Disney Castle, but that was out of the question – but there might be somewhere large enough. Radiant Garden? No, that might hold some bad memories for some of the Princesses. Where else? Where would it make sense to throw a really, really large Christmas party? Oh.

"Well, Halloween Town would make sense," he suggested. "Or, more specifically, Christmas Town." Where better to throw a Christmas party than the very world that it hailed from? "So, how exactly are we doing this? How do we even contact everyone?"

"We could send a letter to King Mickey," Meera suggested. "If he managed to make one reach you guys, he can probably get some kind of notice out to the people you know from the other worlds."

Sora nodded. The suggestion did make sense. "I can try to find a way to contact him and see what he can do."

"We should make it a ball," Kairi quickly suggested, earning bewildered expressions from the other three at the table. "I mean, it'll make it fun. And I'd like to dress up. And to get Meera all dressed up," she explained with a smile. "Plus, I know you're both just dying to wear some super nice clothes. Can't let the two of us outshine you!"

Riku looked as though he cared less and shrugged, looking back out the window. Sora's blue eyes were wide and Kairi continued to smile. "I guess that's fine," he said.

Meera pocketed the small mirror again and looked to her new friends. "I guess that's fine. But I don't really have anything to wear to this… thing." Her voice was dry, but she wasn't going to argue; if Kairi thought it was a good idea, she had no reason to disagree. And she supposed she would allow the burgundy-haired girl get her as dressed up as she wanted to.

"That should be fine," Kairi replied. "I'm sure there are places around here to find something. We've got a day or so before we even need to leave for Halloween Town, and I need a dress too. In fact," she said, looking between the two boys and then back at Meera, "we could go right now. I need to talk to you, anyway."

Meera shrugged. "It's not like I have anything else I need to be doing."

After paying for their food, the four exited the café and went in separate directions: Sora and Riku probably to find their own nice clothes, and Kairi and Meera to go dress hunting. It wasn't easy to find formal-wear stores. They passed one that was just for males, wondering briefly if Sora and Riku were inside, and continued scouring each and every corner of Twilight Town. Finally, after what felt like hours but was really only about twenty minutes, the two girls found a store with both male and female formal-wear.

"This should work," Kairi said, pulling her friend inside with her. Meera, even though she had a large quantity of dresses back in her closet in Radiant Garden, had never been one for shopping. Not that she was a tomboy – she just never felt the urge to have more clothes than necessary. Kairi looked through dress after dress, pulling out a few every now and then. Meera could only hope they weren't all for her. She was more concerned with the dress's functionality: it needed to cover her entire right shoulder, or she needed some kind of jacket or shawl that would do the job.

"Okay," Kairi finally said, her blue eyes scouring the store for fitting rooms. "Aha! There. Let's go try them on!" She seemed far too excited for Meera to really be able to understand her thought process, but she followed her friend's trail and closed herself inside one of the three fitting rooms. From the one beside her, three dresses came falling from the ceiling – no, not the ceiling. From Kairi tossing them over the partition. "Try them on. If any of them feel right, let me see, okay?"

"Mhm," Meera quietly responded. Her first option she barely even wanted to bother trying on. It was pink, and while the color worked for Kairi, that particular shade of pink clashed with her red hair. And clashing was generally bad. But she did try it on. It fit well – how Kairi guessed her size so perfectly, she would never know – but it wasn't something she wanted to be seen in publicly. It was tight all the way until her knees where it fanned out around her calves and feet, and it was a halter top. There wasn't a mirror inside the fitting room, but she didn't need to look at herself to know that she did not plan on wearing that particular dress.

Taking it off and sliding it back onto her hanger, she got out the second dress. More her style, it was black. It was covered in tiny sparkles that made it look like a cloudless, night sky, and she thought before she put it on that, perhaps, this would be the dress. It had a sash around the waist and, again, fit her body perfectly. It even had a sleeve over the right shoulder that completely covered her right shoulder. But, somehow, she wasn't feeling like it was right. She took it off and reached for the third, and final, dress.

In opposition to the first dress, she immediately knew that this was the dress. It was purple, which she was certain was a color she had some strange affinity towards, and s beautiful combination of simple and intricate. She inspected it further after slipping it on. It had a heart-shaped neck-line and was tight down to her hips. At that point, the silky part of the dress tapered down the right side over layers of tulle that gave the skirt its shape. There was a single, crystal flower on the left hip and a few small stones around the top of the dress.

The only problem was that it was strapless.

She silently slid her door open just enough to see if anyone was outside; she would be damned if she didn't get a chance to see how the dress looked. Certain that Kairi was not going to come out any time soon and that no one else was in the store, she crept out of the fitting room to see how she looked in the mirror. It fit her just how she hoped it would, and it didn't even make her look sickly-pale like the black dress might have. She loved it.

"What happened to you?" a familiar voice asked quietly. Her hand flew to her shoulder and she turned around, staring into Riku's turquoise eyes in shock. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, and the expression on his face was one of pure concern.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, finally getting a hold of herself. The silver-haired boy raised an eyebrow and gestured towards the box in his left hand. 'Oh,' she thought. 'That would make sense. He would need clothes too.' She blinked a few times and backed up to the wall, surprised Kairi hadn't come outside. What was she doing? Had she planned this?

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asked. That really was the question, wasn't it? She had been wondering for the entire day whether or not she was going to tell anyone, and along came Riku, effectively taking the decision off her shoulders – whether or not that was a good thing.

"That depends," she started. "If I don't, will you pretend like you never saw it?"

"No."

"Fine, Riku," she snapped. She turned on her heel and walked back into her fitting room, taking off the dress. No matter how much drama it had just caused her, she was still going to buy it and find some way for it to cover her shoulder. Was it really so bad that Riku would know what happened?

'Yes,' part of her mind told her. 'Yes, it is so bad.' Yet another part of her mind was relieved. The only person she had told about what happened was Cloud, and Lea knew because he was there for a lot of it. Maybe it would allow her to feel lighter once it was off of her chest.

She exited the fitting room to see Riku still standing there, staring at her expectantly. She hung up the first two dresses, attempting to ignore his penetrating stare. Without acknowledging his presence, she lightly tapped on Kairi's door. "Kairi," she called, "I picked a dress. Sorry I didn't know you. I'm going to go talk to Riku, okay? I'll see you later."

"Okay," Kairi called back knowingly. Perhaps she had planned the whole situation.

Meera finally turned around and sniffed disdainfully before brushing past Riku to pay for her dress at the register. She could almost feel him following behind her and she glared at him when he plopped the correct amount of munny onto the table in front of them. The employee smiled and handed the dress in a bag to Meera before the two left the store.

She didn't say a word to her companion, nor did he try and make her talk. She was looking for somewhere far away from people, somewhere she felt she could forget about the world, before she was going to tell him anything. She found such a place on top of a hill where she could imagine the sunset would look spectacular – maybe that was why they called it Twilight Town.

"You know the Nobody we're looking for?" she finally asked, placing her bag onto the ground. It was impossible for her to keep the bite out of her tone, and she sat down. Riku followed her lead and stared off of the edge of the hill beside her.

"Yeah," he responded.

"The girl King Mickey said he wanted revenge on. It's me," she explained, pausing before she would explain further. He didn't make a sound. "I met him, and we sort of… I liked him. I thought he was a nice guy, and trustworthy, and I spent a lot of time around him. I'd lost a good portion of my memory at the time, so I didn't know where I was or what I was doing. He made me feel safe, like nothing could hurt me. It changed, though. After a while, he found out that I could completely heal someone just by touching them and pouring my energy into it. I'm not sure how he found out, because I didn't even know at the time.

"He wanted me to use it on him every time he was injured, but I told him I couldn't. It would have killed me, using up every last drop of my energy. He started to get angry all the time, and he would hit me every time I refused him. He didn't make me feel safe anymore. He made me feel like a prisoner. One day, I guess he'd had enough of my stubborn attitude and he came to the conclusion that hitting me wasn't enough. He cast a fire spell directly onto my shoulder and left me in the middle of some forest. He told me he would wait to get his revenge. He planned on allowing me to live long enough to find people I loved, and who loved me, and then he would kill them. After they were all dead, he would kill me too," she finished, refusing to look at her companion. He still hadn't made a sound.

Meera's thoughts were racing. Would he put it all together? Would he understand why she behaved the way she did towards him? No, probably not. It didn't seem like he knew enough about the situation, otherwise he would have already guessed what she assumed the truth was. So she waited, staring out over the town, until Riku finally spoke.


A/N: Yes, yes, I know this chapter came out at the last possible minute. And I apologize. I had a lot going on today, and I've been having difficulty being motivated to write this story. But, as promised, I got it out, and I will again next Sunday. Reviews are always appreciated, and I hope you liked it!

C. E. Taylor