Chapter Eleven: Some Move Forward; Others, Back

The three weeks after their Christmas dinner were spent much in the same way as the three weeks prior and the Alpha team kept their promise to rigorously train for what was to come. The only difference was that they had rung in the New Year by entering the Realm of Darkness.

Their first trip inside the Realm was a fact-finding mission to see what it was like inside. To no one's surprise, it was dark; the ground was a dull and dry bed of grey rock and the pitch-black sky made only slightly less devoid of life by the wispy purple clouds. And because there was no heat or light source to be found anywhere, the Realm was freezing. They located a small pack of hound-like Heartless, the team took the opportunity to test their skill and found out that they were more or less ready to take on the actual Heartless.

Beca swung the Keyblade straight across the belly of the last of the flying Heartless. Unlike its simulated counterpart that Beca was used to, the creature released a heart after its dissolution, and Beca watched it float away before flying down to where her teammates were finishing up the ground-based Heartless that had attacked them.

"I think we've traveled enough distance for today," she huffed, wiping her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand. "Aubrey?"

Aubrey glanced at the display on her wrist and nodded. She took out a device the size and shape of a pen from her pocket and Jesse snapped his fingers to create a small hole in the ground, where she inserted the device snugly.

Despite the fact that the drones AMG had sent in to map and observe the Realm and its inhabitants gave them a clear idea of where to go, the Alpha team knew that they were in no way capable of going all the way to the end in one go. By the drones' estimation, the entire journey would take days, considering the time they would spend fighting Heartless, which seemed to happen at almost every mile they traveled, and recovering from the fight.

After learning this, Gail had devised a clever solution to their problem. She divided the realm into sections based on the team's capabilities and stamina. After clearing each section, Aubrey would install the pen-shaped device that she had just placed on the ground, which would emit a pulse of manufactured light energy strong enough to repel—but not outright destroy—any Heartless within a certain radius of the device.

Gail's innovation allowed them to essentially clear a path through the Realm while building an invisible fence so that they wouldn't re-encounter any Heartless whenever they went back to the real world to recuperate. The ability to return home had greatly improved the team's morale, since gradually chipping away at the goal instead of undertaking it in one long marathon made it seem easier to achieve. But the catch—which was fortunate or unfortunate, depending on who saw it—was that, because the charges were made of only manufactured light, they could last for only twenty-two days. The fortunate side, for Gail, was that, with a limited number of timed charges, the students now had a more concrete deadline to finish their mission once they start it.

Aubrey pressed down on the top of the device and they watched as it emitted a wave of light that extended in all directions.

"Great. That's two down… only a billion charges to go," sighed Jesse.

"Cheer up, Jesse." Beca patted him on the shoulder. "Let's take it one day at a time."

Jesse raised his eyebrow amusedly. Beca was not known for being patient. "Really? This, coming from you?"

Beca merely shrugged. "I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited. We're doing great so far against the Heartless; our only problem is that we need time to rest."

"Yeah, and I don't know about you, but that's a pretty big problem," laughed Jesse. "As awesome as that would be, we don't have unlimited stamina."

"That's why I've been telling you guys that we need to make this a straightforward journey," Beca argued lightly as they began heading back to the real world. "We should be, like, camping out here and stuff."

Aubrey scoffed. "And miss school? Yeah, right."

Beca rolled her eyes. She often forgot that a world—a normal one compared to the one they were currently in—with homework, graduation, and college applications (at least on Jesse's part) still existed beyond the Corridor.

"Besides," chirped Jesse, "if we spent all our time here, you couldn't make your mixes!"

Beca looked away. "Yeah... I guess," she shrugged half-heartedly.

She was too embarrassed to admit to him that she had hit a sort of artist's block with her craft. With Luke's gift, she had an idea of what she wanted the mix to be, but lately anything she made for herself sounded unpleasantly monotonous or repetitive. It felt like there was something missing, but even though Beca had experienced a lack of inspiration plenty of times before, the absence of whatever that something was felt more pronounced that anything she had experienced before. And, after comparing her mixes from those she'd made weeks before Christmas, Beca was certain that this block had something to do with the memories she lost.

About half an hour later, the Alpha team was exiting the Corridor of Darkness that connected the real world to the Realm of Darkness (Beca had discovered that the Keyblade was able to open as well as close them) when they were greeted by Gail and the Professor, with Charlene standing behind them as usual.

"How was the trip?" the Professor asked jovially, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Beca would never understand how a man could be so cheerful when his students had just come from a dangerous, life-threatening journey into a world of pure darkness—on his bidding, for that matter.

"Smoothly, sir," Aubrey answered promptly.. "We just got tired. Sorry."

"No need to apologize," said Gail, holding a hand up. "Although I hope you still have some energy left for a mission."

Jesse couldn't hold back his groan.

"It's pretty easy, I promise," assured the Professor. "It's just that we're all out of manpower right now. See, I sent Team Beta to the Yukon—"

Beca, Jesse, and Stacie didn't bother hiding their gleeful snorts at the thought of Bumper freezing his ass off up north.

"—and a hole opened up somewhere in Central America right after you guys entered the Realm," continued the Professor. "It was quite small so we hoped it would go away but now it's developed into something quite concerning."

Beca sighed. If it was a mission involving a rip that needed to be closed directly, then she was surely required to go.

"Sorry, Beca," Gail smiled apologetically.

"It's okay. Burden of being the chosen one, right?" she joked. Then she looked around at her teammates and suggested, "If it's really that easy, maybe we don't all have to go?"

"That's true," Gail nodded and said to the others, "Who's up for another mission tonight?"

"I'm not that tired," shrugged Luke. "I can go."

"Then that means I'm staying," said Aubrey.

"I'll go, too," said Stacie, stretching her arms and legs. "I've still got a lot of fight left in me tonight."

Jesse and Cynthia Rose also opted to stay behind with Aubrey, so Beca, Luke, and Stacie followed Gail to the hangar.

"We're using the new AMG jet?" Stacie asked excitedly.

"Yup," said Gail. "We can't waste any time, otherwise we wouldn't have asked you immediately after your trip inside the Realm."

"The AMG jet can travel at almost twice the speed of sound," Stacie explained to the other two, her voice tinged with awe and excitement.

"Which is a secret," Gail added, raising an eyebrow at Stacie, who simply waved her hand.

"Doesn't matter, the FAA will lighten up eventually," the brunette said offhandedly. "The point is, we can be there in... wait, where are we going exactly?"

"It's a little-known island country south of the border called Saint John's Island," answered Gail, leading them to the partially built underground hangar where she had parked the jet. Since teaming up with the Professor, she and AMG had invested large amounts of money—in secret—to develop the Institute's facilities. The highly-customized jet was only one of the new toys the students had gotten over the past several weeks.

"Oh, my God—we're going to the Caribbean?!" Stacie squealed, stopping dead in her tracks. "Do you think we can stay overnight? I can go grab my bikini real quick—"

"I'm afraid you're thinking of Saint John in the Virgin Islands, dear," Gail corrected with a chuckle as she led them into the plane's cabin. "Granted, there are quite a few Saint John's Islands in the world, but the one we're heading to is off the west coast of Guatemala. I'm afraid its beaches are rather underdeveloped for your taste."

Beca laughed at the Stacie's crestfallen expression, but Luke frowned. "I don't think I've ever heard of that country before," he said.

"Its official name in the papers is Isla de San Juan, which is Spanish for Saint John's Island," explained Gail, motioning them all to take a seat as the jet prepared for takeoff. "I spent a few months there back when AMG was helping with disease control in developing countries. Their economy has improved a lot in the past ten years, thanks to a surge in private investments, but there is still a large slum population in the outskirts of the capital city."

"I'm guessing that's where the hole opened up," said Beca, taking a seat across the aisle from Gail's.

"Let's just say there's a growing tension between the haves and have-nots," Gail muttered darkly. "The trip will take a little over an hour so you guys can rest a bit if you want to. There's also food in the back—"

Beca was already out of her seat and sprinting toward the food before Gail could finish her sentence.

"Hey, you should rest up. Give me a turn."

Stacie twisted her neck by a hundred and eighty degrees to see Luke standing on the perimeter of the training mat, holding out a bottle of water. "Thanks," she said, uncoiling herself from the depressed punching bag and taking the bottle to gulp down half of its contents. "Is Beca coming?"

"Nah, she fell asleep after stuffing her face."

They shared a laugh and Luke took his position in front of the punching bag. "Do all AMG jets have training rooms in them?" he asked, making two swift punches with his bare (non-metallic) hands.

"Just this one, I think. Gail likes spoiling us."

"I noticed. Why is that?"

Stacie shrugged. "Even before CR and I were sent here, she'd been concerned about Barden. And its students."

"I wonder why," said Luke, ramming into the punching bag with his shoulder and lifting the bag off its hook.

"Wow, you might not even need your metal to fight anymore," commented Stacie. "You're strong enough as it is."

Luke shook his head humbly. "How about you? How's your—?"

"I swear to God, Luke, if you ask me about my rehab—"

"I was going to ask about your powers!" he insisted. "Trust me, I don't want to get chewed out the way Aubrey did."

Stacie glared at him. "I regret telling you about that, by the way."

"Regardless… any progress on your dermal armor?"

"As a matter of fact," Stacie smirked, "check it."

She stretched her torso high enough into the air that her shirt lifted up to expose a wide expanse of skin. "Hit me," she said simply.

"What?"

"You asked about my progress. Now hit me."

Luke eyed Stacie's smooth abdomen hesitantly and gave it an experimental punch.

"Come on, your mom hits harder than that."

"I don't understand how that is insulting."

"Neither do I, but come on! Hit me like you mean it!"

Luke gave the next punch his one hundred percent effort. His fist collided painfully with Stacie's body and didn't even make a mark on her. "Fuck!" he cursed, wringing his hand in pain.

"Oh, shit, I'm sorry!" Stacie apologized, shrinking back to normal. "I'll get you some ice—"

"No, no, I think it's fine," Luke waved her off after checking the bones on his punching hand. "But damn, those are some tight abs you've got."

Stacie laughed. "That means a lot, coming from you."

"Let's see if they can take on metal?" Luke challenged.

"Bring it on!"

After a few more rounds of testing Stacie's new ability, the two sat side by side on the floor to cool down.

"Nothing can hurt me now," she said proudly, wiping herself down with a towel.

Luke turned to look at her. He deliberated asking if she meant something more than the obvious, but in the end he decided against it. Stacie wasn't the type to use non-risqué double entendres; if she meant what he thought she meant, he had no doubt that she would say it.

Suddenly, they heard Gail's voice from the speakers by the door. "Guys, we're landing in five minutes. Meet up at the cabin."

"Let's go." The moment Luke pushed himself off the floor, the small dumbbell rack against the wall tipped over. They turned their heads at the low, rumbling noise to see the dumbbells rolling toward them.

"What the hell?" Stacie instinctively backed away, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, the weights skidded back against the wall where they remained motionless. "I repeat, what the hell?"

Luke turned to Stacie with his eyes wide. "Was that me or you?"

"I didn't feel anything," she replied. "It must be you."

"But I've reached the height of my powers," frowned Luke. "There's nothing else for me to develop."

"Two minutes," came Gail's voice again. They heard a shuffling noise from the speakers, followed by a muffled, "Let me call them!" The audio cleared up again and their ears were greeted by Beca's post-nap energy high. "Luke! Stacie! Get your asses in here now! Oh, wait, don't tell me you guys are fu—"

"Beca!"

Luke and Stacie rolled their eyes. "We'll figure this out later," Stacie assured, motioning to the dumbbells. "First, let's go shut this hole. And by that I mean Beca's mouth."

"Hey, Jesse, are you really that tired?"

Jesse turned away from waving goodbye to Beca, Luke, and Stacie, and gave his girlfriend a knowing smirk. "What do you have in mind?"

"Could you and Cynthia Rose handle the report by yourselves tonight?" said Aubrey. "I have a ton of readings to finish by Monday."

Jesse pouted. "Oh. I thought you wanted to do something together. I mean, it's the weekend after all."

"I'm sorry." Aubrey put her hand on Jesse's cheek affectionately. "How about tomorrow? I'll try to squeeze you in after lunch."

"Okeydokey," he crooned, kissing her on the nose as farewell before she retreated to her room.

The two left behind began preparing the report—a detailed record of any new findings they had while inside the Realm—in bored silence, at least until Jesse whispered excitedly to Cynthia Rose, "Hey, check this out."

Cynthia Rose looked up from watching the progress bar of the uploading file to see Jesse holding—or rather, levitating his phone between his hands. "So you can control metal!" she exclaimed in surprise. But just as the words left her mouth, Jesse fumbled his hold and ended up playing a game of hot potato with his phone before ultimately dropping it on the floor.

"I think so!" he said, once he recovered. "I've been practicing in secret—so don't tell anyone yet, okay?"

"Why not? Don't you want Luke to help you develop it? I'm sure he'd have tons of tips for you."

"I want to be able to do it properly when I tell everyone," he answered determinedly. "So it will blow their minds."

Cynthia Rose just shook her head in amusement and turned back to the screen.

"I know it's kind of stupid but," Jesse continued tentatively, "I think being able to control metal is a symbol that I've finally… beaten Luke."

Cynthia Rose swiveled back around slowly and raised her eyebrow. It was a running joke in the group that Jesse would always try to one-up Luke in everything, but she had always thought it was because of the whole Luke-Aubrey-Jesse love triangle thing—typical white people drama, she thought—but looking at him now it became apparent that, even after he already got the girl, Jesse was still eager to prove himself better than Luke.

She normally preferred to keep out of their drama, but at least it beat paperwork. "What?" she said.

"Well, being able to control metal is pretty much the same as being metal, only I'm more flexible," said Jesse. It sounded like he had been thinking about the difference for a while. "And Luke can't control earth so I've not only got his power, I've got more than his power."

"Why are you so hung up on being better than Luke anyway? I thought you two were just playing around."

"That's a fair question," Jesse nodded with a somewhat sad smile. "I guess it's because… Luke is just that guy, you know? The stereotypical cool, handsome, popular athlete who always gets the girl—only he isn't a jerk. He's actually a perfect gentleman and all of that makes it kind of hard to compete," he added with a sigh.

"So, what, you're jealous of him?"

Jesse didn't answer; for a while he was just staring thoughtfully into space. "You know, the first time I met Aubrey—she was with Luke, and they had come over to this empty lot Beca and I used to hang out and test our powers in—she was just so…" He threw up his hands, not quite finding the right words. "I mean she looked at me like I was dirt on her shoe but that only made it worse. Or better, I don't know."

"But you have Aubrey now," Cynthia Rose pointed out. "And she's been friends with Luke way longer than she's known you but nothing ever happened between them. What are you still afraid of?"

"That she's just secretly waiting for him to admit his feelings for her because she doesn't want to put hers out there first?" he blurted out quickly, again as though he had been mulling the idea for a long time. "'Cause she wants Luke to see what he's missing and realize that they belong together? That this is actually their love story and I'm the foil to Luke's hero? I could go on forever with the list of ways I could lose her."

"Oh, boy," Cynthia Rose exhaled through her teeth. "That's a lot of crazy in that head of yours, Jesse. And, seriously, man, you better stop thinking of your life as some cliché bullshit movie, otherwise you are going to lose her. Not to some other guy, but because you never trusted her feelings for you."

Jesse hung his head. "I know…"

"Then act on what you know, dammit!" she yelled encouragingly. "This group's got too much drama already, what with forgetting a whole person and dealing with some dark shit every other day. Ain't nobody got time for this." She rose from her chair and rubbed her eyes sleepily. "You finish the report. It'll give you a distraction and hopefully help you get your—whatever kind of inferiority complex this is—together."

Jesse was left with a sheepish expression on his face as he took Cynthia Rose's place in front of the computer. Cynthia Rose, on the other hand, was just glad she had thought of a way to escape vapid reporting duties to catch some much-needed R&R.

It was evening by the time the jet made its descent toward the island and landed on a deserted plain about a mile beyond the capital city's borders. After stepping onto the dead grass, Beca, Luke, Stacie, and Gail had nothing but the moonlight and a few lights on the plane's exterior aiding their vision.

"The shanties are a couple of hundred yards that way," Gail informed them, pointing over to faint glow in the distance. "I'm sure we can find the rip easily once we're there."

"Don't they have an airport here?" asked Beca, kicking away the tall weeds from her itchy ankles.

"I'd rather not let anyone know we're here," said Gail, switching on a flashlight and gesturing them to do the same. "While the media here are still relatively slow on the uptake, it's better to be safe than sorry."

They made their own path through the terrain, swatting away bugs and shaking their legs free from tangles of weeds, until they met a dirt path that seemed to lead to the city. They followed it until they arrived at a shantytown that sprawled along one side of a wide, river that was soiled with garbage and bounded on the other side by a tall clay wall.

Looking at it, Beca judged that there were possibly hundreds of small, metal makeshift homes cramped together within. Electricity was clearly a luxury for its inhabitants, as she only frequently saw small flickers of candlelight; the only sufficiently lit part of the town was the area close to the wall, thanks to the light coming from one of the lamps attached to the top of the wall.

"They weren't subtle about wanting them out, huh," she said, prickled by the injustice.

"The city government built this wall after they relocated them from their old homes inside. They did it for the foreign investors," Gail explained sadly. "They needed to show the prettier side of life on the island and not the slums."

They tossed a few large stones at the shallower end of the river so they could get across; Stacie and Beca were discouraged from using their powers to cross in case someone was watching them. Beca pointed her wrist across the river and squinted her eyes at the darkness but she couldn't see anything, much less an observer. Nevertheless, they crossed on foot and walked through the shanty's narrow streets. Gail had told them to switch off their flashlights to avoid drawing attention, but it proved unnecessary since they never met a soul.

Eventually, they arrived at what seemed like a small town center where people would presumably gather. Garbage littered the smoothened ground and wooden chairs were toppled over; even considering its destitute environment, the plaza looked like it had recently been hit by a cyclone. And oddly enough, the team still hadn't encountered any Heartless.

"I thought you said this was an emergency?" asked Stacie. "Nothing seems to be going on here."

Gail didn't answer immediately. She looked around at the mess and muttered, "Are we too late?"

Suddenly, a bright light flashed from around the corner. They knew in an instant that it wasn't artificial, and Luke and Stacia started toward it but discovered that it was just Beca, who came around the corner with her Keyblade in hand.

"Found the hole. Closed it," she announced dryly.

The other three looked at her in surprise. "Already?"

"It's not rocket science," she shrugged, "it's only… well, I don't know what kind of weird science this is exactly—but are we done here?" She glanced left and right. "All the Heartless are gone."

"We see that, thanks," Stacie said sarcastically. "And we're wondering the same thing. Gail?"

The blonde woman squinted at one of the houses. "Maybe we should ask some of the locals," she said. "How's your Spanish?"

Beca shook her head. "Never took it."

"What do you mean you never took it?" frowned Luke. "Your transcript says you got a B in Spanish 1."

"You read my transcript?"

"She actually had someone else take it for her," clarified Stacie.

"How did you—?"

"Hang on," Luke raised his palm. "So you're technically a few credits short—"

While the three debated over issues on privacy and whether or not Beca would be allowed to graduate in a few months, Gail walked closer to one of the houses nearby and tried knocking. She kept trying, going through the neighborhood one house at a time, until she finally encountered an old woman who had been sleeping outside. With the students still in the plaza arguing, she simply used a translating app on her phone.

"Well, it turns out that everybody was in hiding," Gail explained to the three minutes later. "They heard marching and thought it was a police raid or something. Everyone has either left the town temporarily or is hiding somewhere deep in these neighborhoods."

"Marching? They must have been those low-leveled, soldier-type Heartless then," said Luke, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "But where are they now?"

"Well, the locals definitely didn't do anything about it, and no hearts seem to be taken."

"Do you think they could have gone back inside the Realm?" asked Stacie.

"But then why bother coming out at all?" frowned Beca.

"Could you guys keep looking around while I do the clean up?" Gail suggested.

The clean up was their shorthand for making sure that the world was kept ignorant of the existences of Heartless and portals to other worlds. Given the increase in Heartless activity since Chloe's had broken through the Door, the number of mysterious events would have been too great not to prompt an investigation from local officials, so, using a modified version of the technology AMG used to implant memories into Chloe, Gail had created a way to keep their missions under wrap from the public. Erasing memories by force was, of course, impossible, but it was possible to combine haziness with fake memories.

"Do you have to clean up?" asked Stacie, hanging back while Beca and Luke wandered off. "Nobody saw anything anyway."

"Better safe than sorry," said Gail. "You know, we do these clean ups not just to keep the Heartless from the public eye—but also to keep you guys away from it."

"Mm-hm. And how much does it cost AMG every time you do a clean up?"

Gail threw her a calculating look. Stacie had always been her cheekier protégé; 'smart as a whip with an ass that won't quit' was how a colleague at AMG once described the young brunette—and that was after knowing her for only five minutes. She looked at things in the big picture and always seemed to be two steps ahead of any intelligent conversation. So it was no mystery to Gail what Stacie was implying.

"There are more important things in the world than money," was all she said in reply. "Besides, once Chloe gets back she might be able to do this more, uh," she gave Stacie a look, "cost-efficiently."

"Chloe can alter memories?" Stacie asked, surprised.

"Eventually," replied Gail. "Chloe, as a child, was mostly a very powerful telekinetic, but she wasn't too shabby at telepathy, either. At a young age, being able to read minds, even accidentally, is no joke. With a bit of training, she could be doing extremely powerful stuff."

Stacie hummed. "Someone with that much power… no wonder you and the Professor kept her locked up."

Gail turned her head away from the clean up to gauge Stacie's expression. Despite her tone lacking any accusatory tinge, Gail couldn't help but feel defensive against it. "That wasn't the reason we kept her away from society," she said firmly. "Look, I know our explanation was a bit stingy and that you may not remember the times I took you and Cynthia Rose to see Chloe at the facility, but I really hope you believe that I did what I thought was best."

Stacie seemed to backtrack and raised her hands in a pacifying gesture. "Oh, no. I wasn't insinuating anything, Gail," she said. "I'm just saying, when we do get Chloe back, we need to watch out for people who might want to take advantage of her—I mean, sure, the Professor himself tried, but who knows, there might be other people out there who would want to get their hands on Chloe if they ever found out about what she could do."

Gail nodded. "That's why I'm here, Stacie. I plan to make sure that Chloe is safe from the moment we get to her, to the end of her days."

Stacie smiled and nodded satisfactorily.

"Uh, Gail," Beca called from one of the narrow streets behind them, "I think something's going on in the news, follow me."

As they made their way to the center of a cluster of shoddily built houses, the radio on Gail's hip sounded with an announcement from the pilot of the AMG jet. "Ma'am, the radar is picking up on another dark mass in the city."

"I think that's what the news is reporting," said Luke, meeting them halfway and gesturing toward an old TV set that the locals had gathered around outside one of the houses. The display was terrible but it was enough for them to see panic in the streets of a much better lit city.

"Is that satellite TV?" Gail asked, squinting. When Beca nodded, Gail instructed her to take the signal out so the locals couldn't see any more of the news. Then she quickly turned to the others and said, "The city is just beyond the walls. Beca, could you fly ahead and tell us the exact location within the city? I'm going to have to do some extra clean up after this."

Beca nodded and took off into the air immediately. The cloudy night made it easier to go undetected as she flew toward the city. Once she was in sight of paved roads and bright lights, she lowered her altitude and glided through the city's skyscrapers. Beca also had no difficulty locating the rip in the city; she just traced the traffic jam it had caused until she arrived at the gridlock around which local news reporters were already beginning to crowd.

This might be harder for Gail to clean up, she thought grimly as she relayed the coordinates to her teammates via the device on her wrist.

Beca landed a few blocks away from the commotion and disposed of every Heartless that she came across on the way. Most of them were just causing a mess, smashing the windows of various establishments or knocking down lampposts, but others had begun attacking humans. Beca went for those first, careful to use only her Keyblade and not her aerokinesis, as it was easier to befuddle memories of a tiny, pale, sword-wielding girl than a flying, air-controlling one.

After a while, the crowds of both Heartless and people thinned. It seemed that everyone had finally been graced with the common sense to leave their car and run in the opposite direction. With abandoned cars and shops on either side of her, Beca felt like the last woman in a post-apocalyptic city as she walked casually toward the hole.

"Oye!"

She turned in surprise to see a man calling her from the rolled down window of a limousine. Beca couldn't tell much from the shadowed face behind expensive-looking sunglasses, but the man had perfectly coiffed jet-black hair and thick eyebrows. From what Beca could see through the half-open door at the other end of the vehicle, the man's driver had bailed but he was also either too lazy to, or incapable of, leaving his car.

"Ah… What are you doing?" he said in a heavily accented English, seeing that Beca was obviously out of place. "There is danger that way."

Beca chewed her bottom lip. They had been told not to interact with locals as much as possible when they had missions abroad, since meeting a foreigner could be too out of the ordinary and difficult to forget. Still, he was only one man and, given how wealthy he looked, probably had better things to think about. "I'm here to end the danger, sir," she replied gingerly.

The man frowned. "But you are very small—"

Beca rolled her eyes.

"—how are you going to stop it?"

"You see that hole?" She jerked her thumb toward the end of the street, past the vacant cars. "I'm going close it." She made a circle with her thumb and forefinger, and closed it to indicate her intention. However, when she turned her back to him, he spoke once more.

"The monsters," he said. "They killed the woman over there."

Beca whipped back around.

"Over there," he repeated, nodding at the side of the road where, indeed, a woman was crumpled on the ground. Beca glanced at the hole quickly to make sure nothing worse was coming out of it sprinting past the cars toward the victim. As discreetly as she could, she pressed the tip of the Keyblade onto the woman's chest to check if her heart was intact. It wasn't, which only meant there was still a Heartless trolling around with it somewhere.

Beca lifted the woman into a half-sitting position and placed her inside the shelter of a bakery.

"She'll be fine in a while," she assured the man after she returned to the street. Frankly, Beca was more concerned about whether he had just assumed that the woman was attacked or if he actually witnessed it because, again, the latter was much harder to clean up.

"What is that?" the man asked, sticking his head further out his window to get a better look at Beca's Keyblade.

Beca sighed in frustration. "Look, dude, I have a job to do, okay? The more time I waste talking to you, the more problems we're both gonna cause." Without waiting for an answer, she left him and sprinted down the street. Pointing her Keyblade at the center of the hole, as she had done on countless occasions, she let the inexplicable force behind her other mysterious ability seal the rip between the worlds.

In the distance, Beca heard the sounds of Luke and Stacie cleaning up the remaining Heartless and quickly made her way to them. "Where's Gail?" she asked, as the last of the hearts got released. She hoped it belonged to the woman she left at the bakery.

"Looking for a cell or radio tower," replied Luke. "She's going to broadcast the memory modifiers. It's an easier way to reach everybody in and out of the city."

"What's the story?" Beca had always found amusement in how Gail covered up Heartless-related incidents around the world—from giant sinkholes to riots over hockey games.

"Zoo breakout," said Stacie. "Consistent with the injuries and structural damage to the buildings."

"Nice."

They left Saint John's Island about an hour later, after Gail had made sure that every news channel in the city was talking about a zoo escape rather than a mysterious black hole emerging in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, and that there was absolutely no mention of said hole on any social networking site. It was a difficult and complicated task that broke a number of domestic and international laws, but there were more important things in the world than following rules.

Meanwhile, in her room back at the Barden mansion, Aubrey bit her lip and stared, with tear-filled eyes, down at the tiny white mouse on her palm.

"Fuck, I can't do this," she groaned, setting the mouse on her bedside table and wiping away unshed tears. She had already been feeling bad about lying to Jesse about the amount of readings she had; she didn't need this little guy to make her feel worse.

Brushed by a sudden wave of silliness, she responded to herself. "But Aubrey," she squeaked, acting out the mouse's side of the conversation. "How are you going to test your powers if not on me?"

Aubrey grimaced and held up the scalpel she had 'borrowed' from the infirmary. "You have a point, little mouse… but you know, you can still run away," she replied in her normal tone of voice. Much to her frustration, however, the rodent only looked up at her curiously with its beady red eyes and twitching whiskers.

Then it let out a little squeak. It wasn't a particularly loud one, but it the high-pitched cry brought to mind images of someone being tortured and tested on against their will.

"I guess I'd be no better than the Professor… if I hurt you for my own benefit," she murmured. With one last sigh, she put down the scalpel and picked up the mouse. "Never mind. I'm taking you back to the pet store tomorrow."

Too focused on making her way to the animal's cage on her desk, Aubrey stubbed her pinky toe painfully on the leg of the desk chair. She let of a string of expletives and shut her eyes against the pain before having a brilliant idea and shooting them open again. Quickly placing the mouse in its cage and limping over to her bed, she surveyed the damage on her foot. It wasn't cut, but it was definitely developing a purplish bruise.

"Here goes nothing." Taking careful control of the electrons surrounding her toe, Aubrey started off with a light jolt, slowly building from a tickle to a steady charge. After a few seconds, she stopped electrifying herself and wiggled her toes experimentally.

Her tiny toe was painless and good as new.

"I'm… real now, right?"

Jack looked up from the tiny rabbit sculpture he was building with the sand. "Do you mean to ask if you are whole?"

"Yeah… and if, you know, I'm normal now," said Chloe. "I can have memories, make memories. I grow and age, and can die."

Jack looked at her thoughtfully before nodding. "Is this not what you wanted?"

"Of course it is," she said quickly. "I'm just curious… about my powers."

"Huh." Jack paused. "I never thought about that since you got here, to be honest."

"Seriously? After causing so many problems, not to mention being the reason you're here, my powers haven't even crossed your mind?" Chloe asked skeptically.

"They did cross my mind, but I didn't think about you having them, or not having them, right now."

"Well, do you think I do have them? I mean, is this like when Harry could conjure his Patronus because his past self witnessed his future self go to the then-present and do it?"

Jack scratched his head. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Harry Potter? Remember, you and Gail got me the books while you were doing the Project?" said Chloe. "You said you read it, too! Anyway," she continued, rolling her eyes when Jack remained confused, "I was wondering if I can do it now because I've already done it in the past."

"Why don't you try it now?"

"But that's the thing; I don't know how," said Chloe simply. "My Heartless's powers were an extension of what had happened during the incident, right? But as a Nobody, I only had knowledge of the fact that I had psychokinesis and telepathy. Gail didn't implant memories of me getting them while I was asleep, so I have one part of me that never learned to control it properly, and another side that doesn't remember.How the hell do I activate them now?"

Jack shrugged. "I don't have any powers myself but I assumed you just imagine it. Try moving that rock over there."

Chloe turned her concentration toward a small rock in the sand nearby, pulling her brows down and scrunching her nose. She imagined, with much detail, the rock flipping over in the sand. She imagined the physics of it, feeling the weight of the stone shift and seeing the soft ripples in the sand it would create once it fell. When it didn't work, she imagined having invisible arms that picked up the rock. That still didn't work. After repeated failures, her fists were now clenched and shaking with the effort of keeping her body from just lunging forward and moving the rock with her bare hands.

With a grunt, she gave up her efforts and turned to Jack sadly. "I don't think I have my powers anymore, Jack."

Response to reviews:

xcombixgirlx (Sep. 30) - I enjoyed writing the simulations, too! Especially coming up with their usernames haha. Yeah, unlike Beca, Chloe remembers everything since nothing was lost in translation when she became whole again. :) Gail has a pattern of not revealing critical information, doesn't she? Haha.

Maggie (Oct. 1) - Wouldn't that be a surprise for our protagonists? Haha. But then again, 'John' was a very common name for boys in their generation, I think, so It could just be my laziness in coming up with a unique name haha.