Chapter 14: Burn

Axel chose let Xemnas deal with whatever punishment that would assuredly result from this latest botched job, and sprinted for warehouse A-3.

Seifer watched him run away, unable to pick himself off the ground. He spared a side look to Rai, whose face had taken on a hollow look. Seifer shifted his gaze back to Sora and Riku crouched just before him on the hard wood planks of the harbor, and the sinking feeling that sprouted in his stomach began to grow at an alarming rate. He had done it this time, he thought, a faint picture of Xemnas's displeased glower etching itself in his mind. Animates were delicate, Xemnas had said; take this seriously, he had said.

Things had somehow spread beyond his control, and a feeling of utter defeat began to creep through his bones, wringing out is pride like water from a dish towel. Axel had disappeared behind one of the warehouses, presumably A-3 where Xemnas was standing in wait for his fruitful return. The level of furiousness that Xemnas would unleash was not calculable in mortal quantities, and Seifer was met with the decision between sitting there and waiting, or the increasingly more attractive option of running for the hills in hopes that the day that he was found, Xemnas would have cooled off enough to at least offer him a quick and painless end.

Rai's look of hollowness had intensified, and he knew it was because his eyes were fixated on the ghost before them steadily emptying light into the night sky. Seifer himself refused to grant the scene further attention. He had precious moments left before Xemnas's rage was ignited, and he didn't want to waste the time on unpleasantness. Gritting his teeth, he pulled himself to stand, grabbing for Rai with one hand, and for his knife with the other.

Pocketing the weapon, he turned to Rai and sighed. "We should go."

Rai looked at him in shock, eyes barely focused on Seifer long enough to acknowledge that he was being addressed. "What did we do, y'know? What's happened?"

Seifer shook his head. "We've screwed up again. We have a couple options here."

Rai's eyes were heavy with emotion, the most prevalent of which was fear. "What's that, y'know?"

"We can either confront Xemnas now, or run and wait for him to confront us later." As the words exited his mouth, they sounded dry, even to his own ears. "Your call."

"Which one has the better chance of a good outcome, y'know?"

Seifer shrugged. "'Bout even."

Rai nodded, his mind visibly peddling through possible conclusions to this catastrophic turn of events. He let out a heavy sigh. "We should probably just get it over with now, y'know?"

Seifer really didn't want to hear those words, but he knew that Rai had made the right choice. Furiously chewing the bottom of his lip, he stared off towards the distant warehouse, and started after Axel. Rai was close behind him.

Sora was left alone with Riku outside, a look of confusion etched across Sora's face as he watched the light steadily drain from Riku's transparent body. He dimly noted that Seifer and the rest had gone off somewhere, but his mind was so completely focused on the sight before him, and the steadily growing dread in the pit of his stomach that he had forgotten about their presence soon after.

"Riku," he said quietly, daring to scoot forward, watch as his friend studied the fleeting light with increasing fatigue. "What…just happened?"

Riku looked at him, lines in his face were drawn, but otherwise it held a similar look of incomprehension. "I can honestly tell you…I have no idea."

Sora crawled closer, eyes fixed on Riku's hands clutching his stomach as the light steadily wafted away from him. "What's happening to you?"

Riku shrugged. "Light's going out."

"Why?"

Riku narrowed his eyes. "I don't know Sora. Let me just consult all the other ghosts I know and get back with you."

Sora ignored the sarcasm. "Has this happened before?"

Riku shook his head. "Not that I remember."

"Does it…hurt?"

Riku thought for a moment about this question, tilting his head to the side as he considered explaining just what he was feeling. "Not really, but I do feel…different."

Sora felt a chill race up his spine as he watched more of the light waft away. "Different how?"

Riku himself didn't know how to answer him. He had seen Sora following Seifer while he himself was some distance away on the other side of the harbor. Given that his own recent experiences with Seifer hadn't proved to be particularly helpful in the realm of good fortune, he thought it only right that he follow for a closer look. As he had expected things spiraled out of control pretty quickly—from the casual chatter about the fate of Riku's own physical body to Sora's grand yet idiotic outburst—and he saw no choice but to intervene.

He dove in front of Sora, just as he would have had he still been alive, a reflex he didn't even know that he had. It was like wincing, blinking, as natural to him as an involuntary function. Now though, as he was sitting there on the dock, wondering how his little 'concentration' trick was effective on more than just accoutrements at a coffee shop, wondering what all of this steadily streaming light meant, he was supposed to come up with some kind of reasonable explanation for what "different" meant.

He felt good—good-good. It the kind of good he hadn't felt in a while, since being dead didn't leave much room for much positivity of late. The selfishness he had felt earlier had decidedly been pushed away, and though he was mourning the loss of his body, he knew that the loss of a friendship because of it would be far more difficult of a burden to bear. Seeing Sora, helping him for a change as opposed to stealing his frozen vegetables and following him around at work lightened him, and that heavy feeling in his heart—a product of the guilt, he supposed—was slowly starting to leave him.

Overall, he was happy, at peace with the knowledge that through all of this he had done something good. It was different in a good way, different that made him wish that different had happened a long time ago.

But then, there was another difference, only noticeable now while he was physically able to drift through walls and eavesdrop on conversations between Sora and Kairi. It was something he had considered grimly before, though admittedly not in great enough detail to imagine the abruptness in which it could occur.

And that difference, he realized, was the conception of his own finiteness.

He had envisioned, should the possibility of Sora and he not finding a way to unite him with his body become a reality, slowly drifting off into tiny translucent particles before dissolving into thin air, maybe a dramatic flash of light or two to signal his departure. A pleasant fog might roll in, and the starry night sky would be a pleasant backdrop to the whole event, adding the perfect touch of pomp and circumstance to an otherwise cheerless occasion. That would be that. One day he would just start to fade away, then poof, there would just be no more Riku, and Sora and the rest of his friends would move on, and he'd just be…gone.

Now though, as he was sitting here, previous expectations of fading away fading away, he realized that he had not considered the possibility of actually getting killed again as a method for his second death. The irony was not lost on him.

When he threw himself over Sora, not even remotely certain if he would be successful, and felt the knife slide through him, he recalled the odd tingly sensation that had somehow become such an integral part of his existence. It didn't hurt, but it did feel oddly invasive, like there was something inside him that wasn't supposed to be there. He supposed the walls held similar sentiments when he slid through them, so he didn't think much of it.

But then the strange light started to drain out of him, and he knew that all the good different was starting to become not-so-good different, and then he started feeling droopy and loopy and sleepy, and maybe, just maybe different just might mean dying.

He looked down at his hand, which had become fainter than what it should have been, and then there was more of the light wafting up into the sky. It hadn't occurred to him that a ghost could actually die, but he supposed the fact that it was happening was as good of poof of any to confirm that it could.

Riku didn't know how to put all of that into words, so he just stared at Sora for a long moment, and shrugged. "I dunno. I just feel different."

Sora didn't look at all satisfied with this answer, and if anything it intensified the horrified look on his face. "Riku," he said. "You're fading away."

"Yeah, I can kind of see that." He extended a hand to touch some of the light, and found that it tingled when it came into contact with the tips of his fingers. "It's probably a problem, huh?"

Sora's eyebrows angled themselves sharply downward, and he stood up. "Of course this is a problem! I'm not going to just sit here and watch you float off into the moonlight, not after all of this." Sora made a vague gesture to everything around him, but he was far less concerned with being specific, and more focused on finding a way to plug up the hole that was causing Riku to leak all over the atmosphere. "We need to go talk to those guys again."

Riku shook his head slowly, the ghost-version of fatigue becoming very apparent. "In case you didn't pick up on this earlier, they were the ones who tried to kill you. They're kind of good at doing that to people—killing them, I mean. I've seen their work first hand."

Sora shook his head. "They're the only ones we've seen who seem to know about your condition. I'm not just going to let them walk away."

"To be fair, they're the only ones who we've even investigated."

"We're not going to get hung up on technicalities. We don't have a lot of time."

Riku nodded, but found it difficult to pull himself off of the ground and into the air. He did so with relative difficulty, more of the light fading away as he moved. He tried not to change his facial expression much, but Sora's face told everything he was feeling. He didn't like it.

"We're going to follow them. Do you know where they went?"

Riku looked at Sora sideways and thought. His mental processing had slowed. "Eh…"

"Come on, they said they were going to confront someone named Xemnas. Does that ring a bell?"

"Never heard of him," Riku admitted, wanting nothing more than to sit back on the wooden planks and watch more of the light disappear.

Sora worried his lower lip with his teeth, and muttered something unintelligible under his breath. Riku watched the action with increasing disinterest, when suddenly, he snapped his fingers.

"Your body!" Sora shouted reaching to grab onto Riku's arm, but remembering very quickly that he couldn't. He shook away how uncomfortable it made him feel. "They're going to your body."

"Oh right, to burn it."

Sora rolled his eyes. "Well, if it's okay with you, let's stop them…from…doing that."

Riku shrugged. The light, or maybe it was the lack of it, was making him sleepy, so he agreed. "Okay."

"Cut it out. I need for you to wake up." Sora waved a hand through him to prove his point, and Riku responded by trying to open his eyes a little more.

"Let's go, then."

If Sora could, he would have pushed Riku forward, but since his hands would slide right through him, he was forced to follow behind at Riku's decreased speed. He felt bad for him, but even the tiniest boost in his current speed would do wonders for his frayed nerves. Time, just as rapidly as the light, was running out.

He followed him behind a few warehouses, then sharply turned where it looked as if the harbor had ended, and no other shipping related equipment remained to be.

"Where are we going? Are you lost?"

Riku ignored him and continued floating forward. Further ahead, there was another warehouse, dilapidated from time and lack of human care. It was warehouse A-3.

"Here we are," Riku said with a huff. "It's kind of disgusting in there. Don't say I didn't warn you."

Sora ran past him, the garage door to the facility was rusted, and covered in a layer of insect debris and filth. It was slightly raised from the ground as though someone had just entered. "In here? This is where your body is?"

"From what I remember."

"Then why are you just standing there? Let's go!"

Riku grimaced. He remembered what happened the last time he saw it, and wasn't thrilled about the prospect of revisiting the ghost version of queasiness. Something about seeing a dead body, particularly one's own, tended to do that to a person, and he wasn't feeling the best right then anyway…

Sora made the decision for him though, and dove through the crack in the door. Riku rolled his eyes and followed.

Riku had half expected the building to be lit up in flames at that point, so when he saw four identically cloaked men—two of which he had become very familiar with—arguing with each other instead, he was a bit taken off guard. Behind them, he saw the body he had left behind, still obscured by a few crates, but now neatly arranged on the ground. Bruises decorated his face and arms; his clothes were ripped and dirty.

It was him alright.

Riku turned away, certain that if he continued to look he would throw up the remaining light in his body, and end it all right there. Sora noticed the motion however, and his eyes too landed on the hollow vessel that Riku had once occupied. Despite being largely bothered by the sight of a lifeless body, his relief in the fact that it hadn't been torched beyond recognition overrode it. He couldn't suppress a quiet exclamation of joy.

Riku slapped his hand to his face. The four sets of eyes immediately turned in his direction though—because Sora just couldn't be quiet to save his life—halting their bickering.

Only temporarily.

Axel's green eyes gave them a once over, then he ignored them and focused his attention back onto Seifer. "You are a complete waste of space in this organization!" He gestured toward Riku with an outstretched gloved hand, and turned to glare furiously at Xemnas. "Do you see what I was talking about? Seifer broke him, and now someone else is involved. If he stays, I quit."

Seifer opened his mouth to protest, but realized that he didn't have much to say on the matter. The truth was that he had, and that he was going to have to pay dearly for it. He swallowed and closed his mouth, waiting for Xemnas' response.

Xemnas was silent, shifting his gaze from the outraged Axel to the steadily dissipating Riku, and Sora, who looked as though he was ready to take on all four of them, if he needed to.

Xemnas tried his best to remain calm, but the threshold of his patience was starting to bend. He closed his eyes and took in a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Once again, his eyes landed on Riku, and he silently observed his condition.

After a moment, he looked back at Seifer, inclining his head. "Seifer," he said through pursed lips. "Please secure the door to this warehouse."

"But sir—"

"Now."

Seifer swallowed, then shuffled forward, skating around Sora and Riku, nodding his head in a pathetically sheepish attempt at a greeting. He kicked the garage door a few times to shake off the debris, then pulled it down, standing in front of it like a sentry to ensure the prevention of exit or entry.

Riku wanted to point out that the whole exercise was pointless considering his condition, but then realized that the measure was probably meant for Sora, who didn't have such methods for escape. He did not like where this was going.

Xemnas next addressed Rai and Axel, the former trembling as though he were a skyscraper in an earthquake. "Please give our guest's body some room." He nodded at the crates, which Rai and Axel headed for—Rai scurrying, Axel shuffling. "We're going to try to keep this mess to a minimum."

Sora and Riku were completely confused just watching the issuing of orders, so when Xemnas focused his eyes on the two of them, fear raced up their spines.

Xemnas closed the distance between the two of them with slow steps, eye contact switching between Sora and Riku at regular intervals. When he was only a few steps away from either of them, he closed his eyes and let out another sigh. "I presume you are Riku."

Riku was uncomfortable having been addressed by someone he didn't know, but nodded hesitantly anyway. "Who wants to know?"

"It's would be in your best interest to keep most aspects of our exchange on a strictly functional basis. Interest in who I am and what I do could result in your demise on a more permanent level."

Riku swallowed. Xemnas had a point. He was at the harbor after all.

"And you," Xemnas continued, looking at Sora with gold eyes touched only slightly with sympathy, "are…Sora."

"How the heck do you find out these things?" Axel shouted from the back of the room, crate in hand. Rai looked as though he was about to break into pieces at the outburst.

Xemnas smirked. "Continue your task. Leave me to handling this matter." He held Sora's gaze, golden eyes beating down upon him in a predatory manner; whatever trace of sympathy there was had vanished. "I do apologize for the amount of strife you two must have been under given a few miscalculations made by our organization."

Sora balled his fists, gritting his teeth. "I don't care about any of that right now. You know what happened to Riku."

"I do."

"And you have the power to fix it, don't you?"

"I do."

Sora kept the elation out of his facial expression as he spoke. "I'm not interested in anything that your organization has done. The past is the past, and while it angers me that you killed my best friend in the first place, I'm willing to overlook it if you bring him back."

Xemnas couldn't help but feel deeply amused at this. "And if I don't, your plan is…?"

"I'll find a way to get him back myself. Then, after I do, I'll hunt you down."

A great bark of laughter filled the inside of the warehouse, and it made Seifer feel uneasy. Xemnas laughing usually meant that someone or something was on an unstoppable course to permanent destruction. He spared a look to the back of the warehouse, and even Axel looked the slightest bit uncomfortable.

Xemnas subdued his laughter to a light chuckle, eyes narrow, and teeth gleaming in the dark. "You sound like quite a desperate man." He turned his attention to Riku. "And how do you feel about the matter?"

Riku, who was growing so dim at this point that he could barely see his own limbs in the night, didn't know what to say. "Living again sounds good."

Xemnas chuckled again. "If you don't mind me saying, you don't look healthy."

"Are you referring to the light, or the fact that I'm a ghost? Both would make sense."

Xemnas rubbed his eyes. "It was brought to my attention that despite my earlier warnings about the fragility of animates, a guarded hand was not utilized to bring you back to this location."

Riku tried to rub his eyes to get them to focus. "I didn't know ghosts could be killed either. I'd appreciate it if you would keep any other weaponry away from my friend in the future, though."

He looked over at Sora, who was no longer focused on the conversation, but rather the state of the ghostly body before him. It was now but a whisper of light now.

"Speaking of which," Xemnas said with a sigh, "you've brought me to my next point: The matter of your friend."

Sora looked up. "Who cares about me? Just put him back into his body!"

"When we encounter matters of this sort," he gestured towards Riku's body in the back. "We try our best to keep evidence of it to a minimum. That being said, your knowledge of exactly what has happened here has us quite concerned."

"What are you talking about?"

Xemnas looked at Sora evenly. "I'm afraid that even if we do restore your friend back to his current body, we will be unable to allow you to exist."