Chapter 13: Not alone
"What's that sound? My destiny is bound for changes, lost and found." (E-Type, Life)
Riku stumbled through the portal, his legs giving in to exhaustion the very moment he landed on solid ground. He sank down onto his knees, closing his eyes for a moment and focused on breathing and staying awake despite being tired beyond what was bearable.
He had made it, but it had been a very close call. Whatever that horrible thing was, it had been strong and Riku had trouble believing that he had managed to get free of its grip simply by surprising it. Too bad that element of surprise wasn't going to work all too well in the future, seeing as the thing most certainly would remember such an ability as his.
Grimacing from the ache in his muscles, Riku opened his eyes to see where he had landed, a bit uncertain of it since he couldn't hear the sounds he had expected, nor sense the atmosphere of the world he had aimed for.
When his eyes got used to the light, his heart sank in his chest.
This wasn't Disney Castle, not by any means close to being it. He was sitting in a narrow alley leading out to a wide square or merchant street, with various shops and sales stands being visible in between the passersby. The sunlight, bright and unusually clear, flowed over the innumerous amount of people that Riku could see walk by, each and every one of them looking like they came from a completely different world than the one before him or her.
Riku blinked in disbelief and almost felt like crying. He had been so certain that he had opened the portal to the most secure place he knew, a place that would have been ideal for him and Kairi to get help. Instead, he had ended up in a place he didn't know anything about, and to top it off, he couldn't see Kairi anywhere, even though it had been no more than ten, perhaps fifteen minutes between her departure from the island and his own.
Had she even got to the same place as him?
The thought gnawed at him, his worry for his friend increasing as he thought of all the possible openings he could have made without intending to do so, and he closed his eyes, gritting his teeth as he tried not to think about what could have happened. For a weak moment, he felt overwhelmed by the weight of the angst that came over him in company with this worry, but he managed to stop himself in time.
By breathing slowly in and out through his nose, he forced himself to take control over the emotions running amok inside his mind and after a while, he opened his eyes again. Looking at the stone buildings on both sides of him, Riku decided that he couldn't stay here and tried to get to his feet. With his legs feeling no stronger than over boiled carrots, Riku almost instantly fell back down on the ground.
He was so tired! His entire body ached from having been pushed beyond its limits both physically and magically. The portals had been his only way out, but they had cost him what little strength he had had left in him. With a hissed out curse from behind his clenched teeth, Riku tried to stand once more, using one of the cold walls for support and focusing all his willpower on completing this one task. He stood, but he was shivering all over from the effort and all that he could think of was to lie down and just sleep.
Forcing the thought out of his head he started to walk out of the alley. He had made it through the darkness with nothing but a small speck of light guiding him, he had fought monsters far greater than that hissing thing back on the island, and therefore he didn't want to believe he was defeated now. All he had to do was to find somewhere safer where he could rest, just for a moment, and then he would start searching for Kairi.
But despite his stubbornness, he didn't come far, before his body made the decision that he really couldn't go any further without rest and just as he left the shadows of the alley, his knees gave in under him and he fell into the soft darkness of a very welcomed sleep.
Riku slowly came back to his senses and realized that something was different from when he'd fallen asleep. He was lying on something soft and had what he guessed was a warm and soft comforter over his body, and a pillow under his head.
His first thought was that he was back home in his own bed.
It was just a dream! A bad dream, but still just a dream! he thought and felt a smile of relief place itself on his lips.
But in the next moment this feeling left him so fast it almost felt like getting a slap in the face.
"Hey, are you awake?" a young woman's voice was heard asking him from somewhere on his left.
Riku took a deep breath as he let the reality of what had happened sink in, before he slowly opened his eyes. He was lying in a medium sized bed with light wood bedposts, placed along one of the walls of a small room containing two more beds. The white walls and light wood floor and ceiling were given color with the aid of small curtains with a square pattern made of pale blue stripes and a carpet on the floor that were of just about the same color, only a shade darker.
With a snort and a grimace of dislike at what he saw, Riku was ready to just close his eyes again and hope to wake up in his own bed. He badly wished for the recent happenings to have been just a dream.
"I'm sorry that this isn't the Ritz or something, but you should really be thankful that Don got to you before any of the brutes at the docks did!" the young woman said with an annoyed tone in her voice.
Riku reopened his eyes and tried to focus on finding the one who had been speaking to him. Sitting on a three legged stool by the window on the opposite wall, was a girl looking about his age. She had thick, brown curly hair reaching just below her shoulders, intense brown eyes and a small wrinkle between her eyebrows, telling him just how annoyed she was at his reaction.
Her clothes were a bit odd in a way. She wore a knee-long skirt in a dark grey wooly material, a former white shirt and a vest in the same material as the skirt and over it all she had a black cloak over her shoulders. The loose knotted tie around her neck, with red and golden yellow stripes, was the only colorful attribute to it all and, together with the knee-high, not so white, socks and the low black leather shoes it enhanced the image of the clothes being a uniform rather than her ordinary choice of clothing. The clothes were torn and showed a big need of being mended and washed, but the girl herself looked rather cleaned up and well rested, a combination Riku couldn't quite make reasonable.
"Uhm, where am I?" Riku finally managed to ask, slowly moving himself into a sitting position. His muscles were aching all over and to sit was way harder than he'd expected, but he kept himself upright nonetheless.
With a snort the girl closed the book she had been reading, put it on the nearby window sill and turned her full attention to him.
"I believe the correct phrase you're looking for, is ' I'm sorry for being so rude miss and could you please tell me where I am?'," she said, her brown eyes drilling their way into his own turquoise.
Riku felt his cheeks get warm with indignation at the girl's manner of telling him off for something that was hardly to consider as being rude, but he swallowed the reply he had on his lips and chose to take another instead.
"I'm sorry, I'm just a little confused at the moment," he said and made a gesture at their surroundings. "This wasn't where I was last time I checked, and as much as I am grateful for it, it also is quite a shock not to recognize the place I wake up in. So, let me rephrase my question; could you please tell me where I am?"
His hostess didn't seem all too pleased with this answer, but she gave him a short nod in recognition anyway.
"That will do, I guess," she said, her voice a little softer now. "You're at the Ratatouille Inn. We've been staying here for the last couple of weeks and we thought it best to bring you here as well. Changing rooms to get one more bed wasn't too hard and the innkeeper is kind enough to let us pay the same price as before, seeing as we are his only long time residents."
Riku looked down on his hands and tried to make the information sound important in his head, but he couldn't find anything to hang his memory on and he had trouble following her.
"Wait, you keep saying 'we', and no offence, but I don't know who you are, let alone who it is that you're talking about," Riku interrupted her and returned his eyes to hers. "I'll start. My name is Riku and I'm very thankful for all the help that you have given me, even if it's only to give me a safe place to rest. I'm in debt to you and therefore I wish to know who it is that I have to thank for it all."
The girl blinked, a bit surprised it seemed, to this sudden proof of ability to be polite.
"Hermione Granger," she said in a low voice and made an inclination with her head towards the door. "But the one you really should thank is Donnie. He found you and decided to carry you here. All I did was to see to some of your wounds. He's downstairs right now, getting some food for us," she explained and suddenly a smile lit up her face, making her previously so stern look disappear completely, in favor for a much more beautiful and relaxed expression. "They've got the greatest food here; just wait until you've tasted it! It's like being a child again and tasting chocolate for the first time!"
This sudden change in Hermione made Riku raise his eyebrows. She reminded him of Kairi in a way. The thought sent a sting through his chest and he winced. When he looked up, he found Hermione standing by his bedside, a concerned expression in her eyes.
"Are you alright? You look like you've seen a ghost or something," she said, worry in her voice.
Up close Riku realized she was younger than he had first thought her to be. She had to be at least two years younger than Kairi and Sora, not older than sixteen. Her previously stern expression had made her look older.
He forced a weak smile onto his face.
"Nah, I'm ok. I just came to think of my friends, they…" he tried to find a good explanation, but the harder he tried, the more it hurt as his memory of what had happened replayed itself in his head.
Hermione put a hand on his shoulder and sat herself down on the bedside, right beside his knees, with a serious look in her eyes.
"So Donnie was right then, you're like us," she said and Riku had to think for a moment before he understood what she meant by this. "You've lost your world too, right?"
Riku nodded, relieved that he hadn't been forced to make up something in order to keep the existence of other worlds a secret to her, since she already knew about it. Then he realized what this meant and for the first time he thought about the fact that the heartless most probably had started to take over other worlds as well as his own.
"Well, if it's of any comfort, you're not alone," Hermione said, a short glimpse of pain passing in her eyes as she turned her face away. "I lost contact with my friends while we tried to get away, so I don't know if they're ok or if they didn't make it…"
She had been so lost in her own feelings of guilt during her first weeks in this world and if it hadn't been for Donnie, she didn't know what she would have done or if she would even have survived.
It had all happened so fast.
The shadows had come crawling across the floor, giving off a chilling feeling similar to that of the dementors and every one of the students and teachers had tried every magical spell they knew in order to keep them off themselves, but one after another they had all fallen victims to the oncoming masses of living darkness. She had for a moment even found herself fighting back to back with Malfoy, and the Slytherin student hadn't even bothered to look disgusted at her presence as he'd discovered who it was that kept his back clear.
Ron had luckily enough come to her rescue and had taken over Malfoy's place as the platinum blond boy had ran to the aid of one of his house mates. And then Harry had managed to get to them as well.
They had tried all they knew on the shadows, but amazingly enough it had been the simplest of their spells that had proven to have the best effect. Expelliarmus had, for example, been the most efficient of her own spells, and therefore the only one she used once she'd realized this. But it hadn't killed the creatures, only forcefully pushed them away so that she had a good and wide area in front of her that was kept clear of the things. The boys had copied her actions and thanks to this, they managed to get out of the school building, getting a better view of their surroundings and getting rid of the shadows that came through the walls.
They had aimed for Hagrid's cabin, but hadn't made it further than the school yard before that other thing had showed up. At first all three of them had thought it was a dementor and Harry had been the fastest to summon his patronus. The protector had surprised the thing, but not enough to make it run or lose sight of them.
As they'd tried to get past it, the creature had grabbed Harry by his shirt collar and had lifted him up in the air, hissing like a snake as it asked him to give it a shard of some sort. Ron had managed to distract the creature by ramming into it from the side and Hermione had sent off an expelliarmus spell straight into its midsection from behind. This had made it release Harry and all three of them had rushed out the gates, running for their lives as the thing came after them.
More shadows had risen against them as they got further away from the school and they shortly found themselves surrounded once more with no escape route in sight. That was when she'd come to think of a transportation spell she'd read about only three days before when searching through a spell book in the library. It was their only shot and despite knowing better than to try on a new spell for the first time without neither practice nor a tutor to keep her safe, and in a stressed situation as this, she had put her entire being into making the spell work then and there for the three of them.
It had worked, only she hadn't managed to get the boys to come with her all the way through. Somewhere on the way between two worlds, she had lost them and had fallen into this world screaming their names.
Hermione blamed herself for not grounding the spell enough, for losing them. She knew that it could have been the magical barriers at Hogwarts that had prevented the spell from working properly, but she still should have thought about that possibility before trying it. And now, in this boy that she barely knew, she saw the pain she felt herself.
"I think I know how you feel," Riku said after a moment of silence. "I lost one of my friends, Sora, to the shadows and when another of my friends, Kairi, and I, tried to get away, we got separated, mostly because of me. I don't even know if she's here on this world or if she ended up somewhere else completely."
Hermione looked at him with a shine of understanding in her eyes and Riku felt something click into place. This was someone he was meant to meet, someone who was connected to him in some way. It felt odd, and yet, it made him just a little bit relieved at the same time, because this meant that he wouldn't be alone in his search this time. Whatever help this girl could give him, destiny had made it so that they could meet and he wasn't one to object.
With a strange feeling of a connection deeper than that of the moment, Hermione couldn't help staring into the older boy's strangely turquoise eyes. She couldn't quite figure out what it was that made her feel so close to this stranger, but for some reason she knew that she wouldn't leave him. It was as if she had been friends with him for just as long as she had been friends with Harry and Ron and that this meeting was somehow meant to have happened, sooner or later. Before any of them could put words to this sudden moment of bonding, there came a knock at the door and both of them turned their eyes that way.
"Hermione, could you open the door? My hands are full," came a muffled teen voice from the other side of the door and Hermione rushed to her feet, wanting to get some space between herself and the inexplicable feelings that she had felt when she'd looked into Riku's eyes.
"I'm on my way, Donnie!" she called out and took three wide strides towards the door, pulling it open with a fast jerk at the handle.
"Hey, it's not that urgent," the newcomer said with a startled tune to his voice.
Riku swung his legs over the bedside and finding his shoes, he put them back on his feet.
"So what's today's treat?" Hermione asked.
"Well, this place doesn't do pizza, but this soup is supposed to be the best they have, so we'll have to make do with it, I guess," Donnie said with a slight touch of disappointment to his voice now and entered the room.
Riku looked up from his shoes just in time to see the mentioned bowls of soup being put down on the small table that was placed by the window, right beside the stool where Hermione had been sitting when Riku first woke up.
Now, Riku didn't know what he had expected, but he was still a bit surprised as he saw the one Hermione had called Donnie, turn around to face him. The guy proved to be what looked like an upright walking turtle, arms and legs looking quite human, apart from the number of fingers and toes. Around his wrists he wore dark brown leather wrist warmers of some sort, and on knees and elbows he had pads of the same color and material. It all matched the wide belt he'd tied around his midsection, holding up a long wooden staff in a small sheath on his back shell. Over his surprisingly human and friendly eyes, he wore a purple eye mask bandana.
"Ah, so you're finally awake!" he said when he spotted Riku. "How're you feeling?"
Riku quickly gathered his senses enough to come up with an answer.
"Uhm, I'm still a bit tired and my body hates me, but otherwise I think I'm fine," he said, a crooked smile on his face.
"Hah! Sounds like the leftovers of a morning workout," Donnie said, smiling back and reached out a three fingered hand. Riku took a hold of it and got a firm handshake.
"I'm Donatello," he said, his voice warm and welcoming. "You can call me Don, or Donnie."
"Riku," Riku said, releasing himself of the handshake. "Hermione told me that you're the one who found me and got me here."
Donatello threw a quick look over his shoulder at the girl who had seated herself once more on the little stool by the window, eyes examining the red colored soup in the bowls Donatello had brought them.
"She did now, did she?" he said as he turned back to Riku. "Did she also tell you that her magic was what kept you from going into a coma?"
Author notes: Finally, all three groups are assembled! What do you think of the mix? Unexpected? interesting? Terrible? Adding Donatello demanded a thorough thinking of me, 'cause I love him as a character, but he's also the only one in the three groups who isn't human, so I was a bit worried about the over all balance, but then I thought, hey, he's perfect in personality for the story, so I went for him anyway. Also, he was the only of the three choises I came up with whom I knew enough about to make my own version of without straying too far away from the original. Tell me what you think of the groups! ^^ /Silverspegel