Okay, so... Lots of flashbacks/telepathy in this one. Also, I want to explain something real quick before you get down to the flashbacks... Asch, Sync, and Dark can feel every emotion Kairi was feeling when she's reliving these memories for them. Hence, the reason for a scene that would still be rather out of character after one of the flashbacks.

We might not show it all that well on the outside, but Dad's death really did hit me hard, so it would have hit Kairi hard too.

That having been said... Go read 'Red Sighting' in Colored Ripples. Before or after, I don't care. But it ended up being more than just a request when I finished writing it.

Also, Asch drops the 'f' word twice... The first time he's trying to sound really pissed off (the reason why he isn't is in that CR chapter), the second time... Well, I really can't blame him for the second time.

Now then, go read!


Chapter 6.11 – An Assassin's Promises
Part 51

"Where the fuck have you been?!"

Well, that was more mild than I'd been expecting.

Asch looked ready to continue his rant, when confusion clouded over the rage. "Dark? What are you doing here?" he asked, definitely more sedately than before. The former assassin shrugged.

"Just following orders," he replied with the kind of expression that I'm sure Asch translated as 'I'm not entirely sure I want to be here.'

"Orders from whom?" Sync asked from where he was cautiously perched on the bed he'd claimed near the door. I noted the end of a sword sticking out from under the side closest the wall and recognized it as Asch's, and raised an eyebrow at the green-haired teen while the redhead's attention was on Dark.

"The Princess," he said bluntly. Asch frowned.

"Then it was you two and Koran with her earlier?" I nodded.

"Natalia offered Dark a job as her bodyguard the last time he was in Baticul. Unfortunately, Mohs decided he was going to crash that little party," I said. Dark chuckled.

"You should have seen the look on your replica's face when I told him what Mohs did. It was rather comical," he said. I crossed my arms.

"If it was anything like the face he made when I mentioned Asch nearly taking my arm off, I can imagine," I muttered. Asch blinked.

"Wait, you actually went up to..." he trailed off. I shrugged.

"I tagged along with Dark and Natalia and ended up in the manor. Kicked Luke's ass, too, if it makes you feel any better," I told him. Dark sighed.

"And he had Guy's help as well," he added. Then he frowned. "So, what was it you wanted to explain?" he asked.

If Asch had a switch that read 'flip to activate pissed-off mode,' Dark's comment did a wonderful job of flipping it.

I cringed. "Okay, everyone's going to need to get comfortable, because we're going to be sitting, laying down, whatever for at least an hour, probably three depending on whether Sync can keep his mouth shut," I said. "There's no easy way to explain this, so I might as well do it the way I know is going to take the least amount of arguing."

Asch frowned. "What does going onto the second plane have to do with explaining—"

"Remember Aramis Spring?" I interrupted. "After that first actual spar, when I sat down and started going over the fight in my mind, and that dome of Energies formed around me?" frowned.

"What's that got to do with anything?" he asked. I sighed and sat down on the floor in one of the corners.

"Get comfortable. This is going to take long enough as it is," I grumbled. Dark, however, kept glancing between the three of us.

"Um..."

"I'll talk you through what we're doing once you're sitting. Or laying down. Might be more comfortable in the end," I said. Sync chuckled dryly, scooting back further onto his bed and laying down, obviously not in the mood to have sore shoulders coming out of this. Asch ended up being the only one of the three boys still sitting.

I took Dark through leaving his body using the same steps I'd used for Sync, and soon, the four of us were standing around in the middle of the room.

*This is weird...* Dark said, looking around. I sighed, sitting down on the floor and already pulling in moon and earth Energies.

*Look around later,* I replied. *Get over here and sit down.*

He blinked. *Um... what was the point of this?* he wondered. Asch sighed.

*I'm starting to wonder that myself,* he grumbled. I groaned, even as the three of them made a sort-of semi-circle.

*The first thing you need to know, is that I didn't like lying to you guys*, I said, still collecting up the Energies I needed. Sync frowned. *You'll understand why I did when you see where I was really born, where I grew up... And where my real body is right now.*

*What do you mean? You said...*

*I know what I said. I lied,* I told Sync bluntly. *And... There's a good reason why.*

I pulled the Energies into form around us before anyone could speak again.

"Well, no, but..."

"Then come on!" the brunette in front of me insisted. I groaned.

"I am not going to let you people 'kidnap' me!" I grumbled, putting air quotes around the word 'kidnap.' "I would much rather not have to deal with my mom, thank you!"

"Oh my gosh! Your mom can't do anything if you come with us!" another brunette insisted. A large boy was leaning against the black car nearby. My memories attached the names 'Shandon,' 'Rabecah,' and 'Chris' to the three of them.

I rolled my eyes. "She will yell, and scream, and ground me! None of which I want to deal with!" I argued. "Now give me back my book bag!"

Chris sighed and handed over the purple bag in question. "Well, there went getting you out of your house," he grumbled. I sighed, walked over to him, stood up on my tiptoes and kissed him.

"Sorry," I muttered, already pulling the straps of my bag over my shoulders. "See you guys tomorrow?"

All I got in response were annoyed mumbles.

*What in the world?* Asch asked.

The scene shifted.

"And if he gets shaky, you get him in a wheelchair, you got it?"

I nodded to the older, larger woman in the front seat. "Yes, Mom," I said, jumping out of the Jeep and closing the door, running around the back end to catch up to the thin man who was walking across to the glass sliding doors. He stepped through before I did, walking over to one of the benches and sitting down. I blinked back tears, seeing the way he was relying on his cane, and sat next to him quietly.

"How was Sarah's birthday party?" he asked. I blinked, looked up at him, then snorted.

"Heh. 'Party.' Funny, nice joke, Dad," I replied sarcastically. "Rabecah was sitting on the computer drawing the entire time and pretty much ignoring everyone else, although given the fact that she's practically living at Sarah's house now, that may have been her attempt at a strange birthday present. Shandon was late and then would not shut up. Oh, and Sarah and I kept ignoring her to talk about one of the spell circles Mom's been teaching us, and Shandon would get all annoyed and try to butt in, and I think Sarah actually told her to go to hell once... Proof that her secondary is definitely fire."

My dad laughed lightly at that one.

*Yulia... Kairi...* Sync started. I clenched my jaw and slipped into the next one.

"You know, you'd do better if you did your homework once in a while."

I looked up from the poor attempt at a liger I'd been doodling and stuck my tongue out at Sarah before looking at my scribble, turning the page, and continuing to draw on the next one. This time, it was a seahorse. Unlike the liger, fifteen minutes later when the bell rang, it looked pretty nice. I gathered up the rest of my stuff and stood up, walking out of the classroom without a word to Sarah.

Then I was sitting next to her again in the next class, and the lights had been turned off, and the smartboard was on, and I was just sitting there, looking at the stars shown as Mr. Smith started asking questions about constellations we'd discussed the day before.

*Why...?* Dark whispered.

I pulled us out of my memories for a moment, allowing the Energies to dissipate. Asch's face was pale.

*That wasn't Auldrant, he stated quietly. I shook my head.

*We call it Earth. Our ancestors weren't very creative,* I said. *I was born there, December 7, in a hospital in a city north of the small town I spent the next seventeen and a half years of my life in. My mom taught me about Energies after I lit a fire in the woods eight blocks east of our house,* I explained. *The calendar's different, too... 365 days in a year, 366 in leap years...*

*What the hell is with the extra day?* Dark wondered. I chuckled.

*Earth takes three hundred, sixty-five point twenty five days to circle around the Sun, the star in our solar system, like it takes Auldrant seven hundred fifty-six days to go around its star,* I explained. *To keep the calendar accurate though, we say it's three hundred sixty-five and add a day every four years. And there are only twelve months, and... Yeah. Our calendar is confusing. Anyway, you guys saw the second memory, right? That was... well, two and half months ago, by Earth's calendar, give or take a few days. Maybe a week before I got dropped into a snowdrift in Keterburg.*

Sync pulled his legs up to his chest. *Your dad... He... He didn't look too good,* he said slowly. I bit my lip and ducked my head.

*He was really sick. He...* I stopped. I closed my eyes, pulling the Energies back in.

I paused and held a hand to my chest in shock. A wave of emotions tumbled over me: sorrow, pain, anger, hopelessness… I had no idea what to think. What was going on?

"Kairi?"

The feeling of being needed elsewhere came upon me, and I stared up blankly at Sync, his face almost right in front of mine. His lips continued moving, but I didn't hear anything more, and my body was numb already. My vision followed my hearing, and the world went completely dark.

It faded quickly, leaving me to open my eyes and blink repeatedly. But the fogginess wasn't fading. I frowned and looked around, trying to see through the blur, and that's when my hand touched against something. I didn't pick up the glasses though. I didn't need them to figure out where I was.

My room. I was sitting in my bedroom, my journal open on the bed next to me, and my glasses sitting just a bit off. And, judging from my sore eyes and the tissues littering the corner of the bed, I'd been crying. Why was I crying?

I grabbed my glasses and slipped them on. While I'd gotten used to not feeling them across my nose, my body obviously was still used to it, because I forgot they were there a moment later. Now then, what was going on? I glanced down at my journal, picking it up and reading through it. There were more than a few smudges from where my tears had landed on the pages.

As I read the first few lines, I understood, and that understanding brought new tears to my eyes. I closed the journal and set it on the bed before getting up and walking out of my room, taking the familiar path out to the living room. My body was on autopilot while my mind tried to reconcile with the new information.

"You're back…"

I looked up into brown eyes, realizing I had gone past the living room and into Dad's bedroom. I bit back a sob and nodded, tears flowing freely from my eyes. My mom stood and took the step away from the bed to hug me. "You're home…"

I buried my head in her shoulder. "Yeah, Mom. I'm home," I choked out, finally looking over my mom's shoulder to where my Dad lay. He looked bad, worse than he had when I had last seen him, and that brought another round of tears to my eyes. "I'm home, Dad," I called quietly. "I love you…"

My mother and I stayed by his side that night, and the next. It was a long, continuous cycle of tears, hugs, silence, and more tears.

I'd been writing in my room for hours, making good use of the time there to type up my adventures. I wandered out, wanting a break from staring at Microsoft Word for hours, and preferably a drink to go with that.

Mom was sitting out on the couch, crying, the phone in her hand.

Then I felt it, that subtle snap of a life I've tied to my spirit breaking away forever. I didn't bother to hold back the last round of tears as I collapsed against the wall.

My father was dead.

The Energies broke apart before I could skip ahead to returning to my body, but the tears were already spilling over again. I don't know when Sync moved over and wrapped his arms around me, but when I finally pulled myself back together, he was there, head buried in my shoulder, while Asch refused to meet my gaze. Dark just looked upset and awkward, and I don't blame him. That's about how I felt.

*Kairi...* Asch whispered. I shook my head, embracing Sync and holding onto him like a lifeline.

*It's over and done, now. There's no point muddling over it anymore,* I said. *I miss him, and I wish he hadn't had to go like that, but there was nothing we could have done.* I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself again. *Do you understand, now, why I couldn't tell the truth?* I asked.

Asch nodded. *Yeah... But that still doesn't explain Daath,* he said quietly, almost reluctantly. I smiled, then laughed, a specific memory coming to mind.

*Alright. I can explain that one too,* I told him, pulling in Energies as Sync finally pulled away a little. Then we jumped right into the next one.

*Feel free to laugh or be disturbed by this one,* I warned as colors came into focus.

"Here!" I grumbled, shoving the controller into Rabecah's hands.

"What am I doing?!" she asked me. I shrugged.

"Playing the game. What else?" I replied, scooting over to the other side of the bed where a relatively ancient laptop sat on a table.

A few moments later...

"Ah! What is this?!"

I turned around and about died laughing.

"That, my friend..." I started. "Is called a costume title."

Rabecah's eyes were wide, and I was too busy laughing to realize that she was playing around in the menu. "Oh. Uhg..."

I shouldn't have looked. I really shouldn't have looked. But I did. And started laughing harder.

*What the fuck?!*

I laughed at Asch's outburst. *If it's any consolation, that was Luke, not you,* I told him, allowing the Energies to dissipate again. Dark was caught somewhere between laughing and choking, while Sync was straight-out cackling.

*What—I mean, why—gah! Why?!* Asch spluttered. I laughed.

*It's a costume title,* I replied. *Rabecah changed his title, the title changed his outfit.*

Asch groaned. *I kinda get that, but... How... what... Ugh...* He gave up. I smiled.

*It's called Tales of the Abyss, I said. And... It's this world.*


Also, because Tea kept asking... The two costume titles were Towel Boy and Abyss Red, in that order. (And yes, Rabecah really did do that... Although it was just a couple months ago, no way back in May/June, and the laptop wasn't the old one I'd had to deal with, but my new one. However, since Kairi hasn't been back home since before the funeral... A few details were edited.)