Enamis09: Hey, welcome back! Sorry that you had a bad 2 weeks.
Hmm...advice for writing a novel...read a lot, and take note of what you like and don't like from other author's stories. Edit, edit, edit – the greatest storyline can be completely ruined by poor grammar and spelling. Bad structuring can also turn people off to your story, so make sure you know where paragraph breaks should go.
And as for more creative advice, vary your sentence lengths to help with the flow of the story. I have to force myself to write shorter sentences sometimes, so that all the longer sentences don't get monotonous (though shorter sentences are much easier when writing dialogue). Also, try to vary the types of words your sentences and paragraphs start with – don't start everything with "he" or "she" or a characters' name, make sure to sometimes start with "ing" and "ly" words, and words like "as", "before", "when", etc.
Hope that helps! Good luck with your writing!
DyingofFeels: Ah, midterms. Fun stuff. Glad you liked the last chapter! Yes, I do have that request written down, though I'm glad you brought it up because I couldn't remember who exactly had requested it ha. I'm going pretty much in chronological order for right now, so that will come up in a couple of weeks, probably.
Nevquariel: Yay, I'm glad you liked it! That's a good request, I hadn't thought of doing anything like that. Yeah, it's true that I do have to take time away from working on book 3 in order to work on these oneshots, but I think I've mentioned to you before that sometimes I need the break. Book 3 is actually going a little better right now than it has been...I've had a lack of inspiration for this book for some reason, but I'm in a section of it currently that is a bit easier. Thanks for asking!
Since today's oneshot is not a request, I guess I can technically say this is "the Lea's perspective that nobody asked for". Every time I write from a different characters POV, particularly that of a canon character, it's a new challenge. I had fun with Lea! In fact I think this chapter may have turned out to be one of my favs. Even though whenever I decide to write one of these in third person I always end up switching back automatically to first person like fifty times and have to go back and fix it lol.
This chapter takes place while Meli is in the training world with Lea and Kairi. You'll recognize it several paragraphs in.
EDIT 3/19: Sorry guys, I forgot to include a TRIGGER WARNING for this chapter...brief mention of suicidal thoughts.
Chapter 28 ReMix
(Runs parallel to chapter 28)
Lea's perspective
Blah blah blah blah connect to your heart, feel it in your fingers, channel through your Keyblade, blah blah blah. It had been the same spiel for like, forever, not only today, but every time he tried to learn one of these fancy-schmancy magic things, and he was getting so tired of hearing it. Sure, maybe it worked for like, basic stuff, like Blizzard and whatever, but clearly it was not working today, and clearly Meli was not getting that it was not working today. Sometimes the girl just didn't know when to give up. Him? He was cool with giving up. He could tell when something was just not going to click, at least not right away. It was far better to give up, take a break, come back to it another day, than to push himself to the point of explosion, which he was currently very close to reaching.
He had tried to tell her that, like, twenty minutes ago, at least. But of course, she had just interpreted that to mean that he was being lazy and not trying hard enough. Which, granted, he was a pretty lazy person most of the time, and had tried to get out of quite a few training sessions over the past several weeks in a variety of ways. So, touché. Guess he asked for that one. And knowing her, and her – should he go so far as to say hatred? – let's stick with intense dislike for him, she probably thought that he wasn't getting it now because he was still trying to get out of doing it.
"Again."
Sucking in a breath through his teeth to try to squelch his rising frustration, he set his face and started the sequence from the beginning...and failed, again. In the exact same way that he had failed every other time. Meli crossed her arms, looking thoroughly ticked off, and he turned his back on her, head tipped back toward the sky as he put some space in between them.
I swear, if I hear the word "connect" one more time...
"You're still not connecting your heart with your Keyblade."
That's it. Throwing his arms out to the side, he let the flames that had been simmering beneath his skin burst out with a roar. He didn't pay much attention to the size of it, but knew just based on the amount of tension that went into it that it was a veritable inferno. Only a few seconds later, he let it die out to nothing, already feeling so much calmer.
Well, until Meli yelled, "What the crap, Axel?" and he turned around to see that the cabin they had been living in was on fire. He swore, wide-eyed and stunned. I just set our cabin on fire.
It's not like he hadn't seen plenty of fire in his life. He was "The Flurry of Dancing Flames", for crying out loud. And, you know, there was that time he had kinda killed himself with a little too much fire. But he hadn't ever accidentally set anything on fire before. Okay, fine, not in a long time, anyway. Not since he first got the ability. Whatever, he hadn't ever accidentally set something important on fire before. Like their temporary home, with all their stuff inside.
Meli had rushed forward and was shooting ice all over the roof of the cabin. He knew he should be helping, but she was using like, third tier magic, and his pitiful first tier would have basically amounted to throwing snowballs at it. Even her Blizzarga or whatever the heck it was called didn't seem to be doing a whole lot of good – the fire was moving much too fast for her to keep up with.
"I'll be right back. You stay here, and cast Blizzard at anything that gets past the cabin!"
He nodded without thinking, then did a double-take as she took off running through the open door, into the burning building. "Wait...Meli! What the...?" Is there really anything in there that's important enough to go after? I mean, I hate for her and Kairi to lose their stuff, but... And how was he supposed to actually stop this thing from turning into a forest fire? Did she really think Blizzard was gonna do the trick?
Apparently he was about to find out, because flaming chips of wood were starting to fly off the building and land in the grass around it. Thankfully it was nothing too big so far, so his spells actually worked to put them out. He focused solely on that, determined not to let his mess turn into an actual complete disaster.
After a couple of minutes, though, Meli crossed his mind again. Surely she should have been back by then. More and more of the cabin was getting engulfed by the second, and he didn't like thinking about what could have happened or what might happen very very soon if she didn't get out of there. He rocked back and forth from one foot to the other, antsy to go find her, but not wanting to neglect his duty to keep the fire from spreading. If something else catches while I'm in there, she could put it out once I bring her back, right? If she's okay, that is. And of course if she's perfectly okay and I go get her and something catches on fire then she's gonna be mad at me. Not that she's not already.
He was still undecided when a large chunk of the roof cracked and gave in. Then he didn't even need to decide. His feet were moving as fast as they could go before the last piece even fell. Forget this, I'm not letting anybody else die from my mistakes.
The smoke inside was like trying to see through fogged up glass, but as he crossed through the front part of the cabin that had belonged to him, he spotted her silhouette just on the other side of the doorway. She was just...standing there. "What are you doing? Come on!" He raised his voice to be heard over the fire, latching onto her wrist and yanking her back toward safety.
It was just in the nick of time, too, because as soon as they were out the door, the rest of the roof collapsed. Meli dropped down to her hands and knees in the grass, letting out painful-sounding hacks, and he crossed quickly behind her to beat out the tiny flames and glowing embers that dotted the upper back and sleeves of her shirt. The skin that was visible through the holes left behind was bright red and swollen. After a moment she tried to pull away, but he gave one last pat for good measure before leaving her alone.
Coughing a bit himself, he allowed himself to drop down onto the ground, still facing the cabin so he could keep an eye on things trying to escape. Despite feeling suddenly exhausted, he was still unnerved at the way he had found Meli. "Have you lost your mind? Were you trying to get yourself killed?"
"Yes."
He almost choked. "Wait...yes to which one?"
"Possibly both."
Possibly...what? It wasn't that he didn't know the chick had issues, that much was pretty clear, though he had no idea what exactly her issues were or where they had come from. But he hadn't thought...did she really want...? He watched her pick up what looked like a photo from the pile of stuff she had dropped on the ground and stare at it like it was the only thing that existed in the world, and wondered not for the first time what kinds of things really went through this girl's head.
She glanced up at him, finally, coughing once more, though thankfully without sounding like she was dying this time. "So what was your excuse? Because last time I checked I wasn't the only one in there."
Seriously? He groaned and massaged his forehead against the headache he could feel encroaching. "I went in there to save your neck, you idiot!"
"I didn't ask you to save me," she hissed.
"Well, yeah, clearly not, since you were apparently trying to die!" She flinched a little at that, and he sighed, standing up. "If it makes you feel any better, my reasons were purely selfish. I was the one who started the fire, and I...couldn't stand having any more deaths on my conscience."
She didn't answer. Of course she didn't. He wasn't sure why he bothered trying to open up to her, even a little bit, when she was never going to do the same to him. Not that he should take that part personally, since he was pretty sure she didn't open up to anybody. Maybe Riku, from what he had heard. But Riku wasn't there.
She was still sitting on the ground with that picture in her hands when he turned back to look at her. "Are you at least gonna heal those burns?" The most visible one on her arm didn't look quite as bad as the ones on her back, but it certainly didn't look good. "I'd do it myself, but you know I still suck at Cure."
"They're not that bad."
Not that...really? Okay, we're apparently going there. "Come on, don't do that."
"Do what?" She clearly wasn't happy with him for trying to tell her what to do, but somebody needed to intervene.
"Punish yourself for who knows what crime you feel like you've committed. I've been there. I know how it works, and it's pointless." The fact that the memories were still painful was one proof of that.
The look that she leveled at him was pure wrath. "You don't know anything about me."
"That's because you won't let me! You don't know anything about me, either, yet you've apparently decided I'm evil."
"I know plenty."
He scoffed and turned away. "Okay, whatever. You know, maybe if you tried sleeping a little more instead of sneaking out every night, you wouldn't feel the need to stand in a burning building. See, I do know more about you than you think."
They were saved from further conversation by the arrival of Kairi, which also forced Meli to have to actually heal herself, much to his relief. He didn't know why he even cared. It was his fire, yeah, but that wasn't really what he was worried about then. He just...didn't like seeing someone else hurting themselves like that, especially somebody who probably hadn't actually done anything to deserve it. Apparently the girl's issues ran deeper than he thought. In a way that kinda made him feel better, since that meant it wasn't just him that was the problem. But really, he just hoped that at some point she'd actually let somebody help her.
Please let me know what you thought in a review, and if you have any special requests, shoot them my way! Ideas for scenes can be as vague or specific as you want. I'll try my best to do whatever I receive!