Like I said before in Triad of Keys, I've had virus trouble. So, here's all
I've got done so far! Here is...Killer Deals and Lover's Chills!
Chapter 6: Many Voices
Sora and Mom (Freda) raced up into Blank's house, Sora for the first time. The room was as open as anything, all with wooden floors and all painted differing shades of blues. It reminded Sora a bit of his room, with all that green. Blank had told him what the technique was called—monochrome. He didn't like the idea very much, and it called true here as well.
Edward, a man with long, slick graying hair tied back at the nape, was seated at the coffee table, rummaging through a stack of paintings—Blank's. Sora knew they were Blank's only because she'd shown him similar works. Always dark, always mysterious, and always a woman portrayed off to the right or left. Usually, they were personas representing herself, Sora, or Renee, a friend Sora had as of yet to meet.
"Three teenage artists and not a single one of their pieces up in here..." he muttered under his breath. Sora cleared his throat gently.
"Hey, Sora, Freda, well. What do you see happening in this room?"
"Color!" Mom shouted at once. Her eyes had gone a frightening shade of violet, her hands clasped, lips twisted in a maniac sort of grin.
"Color, good, Sora?"
"Separation, and perhaps art," he said. "This room needs to reflect Blank—and she's not a canvas."
"Precisely what I was thinking," Edward grinned. "We are going to separate the rooms, I have an interesting valance idea, and paint the furniture, and a surprise."
"What's the surprise?" Sora asked warily. He'd watched just enough of Edward's designs to know to watch out for his "surprises."
"Let's clear out the room, starting with the small things."
Edward glanced at Sora, with her missing lashes and eyebrow, then at her mother. His hands expertly loosened the top of the paint cans, six gallons of it. Pints surrounded him, accent colors that would all "contradict," as he'd said.
"Any guesses what the living room color is?" he asked.
"Um...red," Sora guessed.
"Black or white," Mom said. Sora and Edward stared. "What? It goes with Blank."
He removed the top, revealing a luscious shade of aqua. Nearly the same color as Kyle and Blank's eyes.
"Well, er..."
"I love it!" Freda shouted at once, drowning out Sora's voice. Sora silently agreed with her.
He unveiled the remaining colors, each to paint a part of the house. Sora was in charge of the kitchen and dining rooms, approximately half of the room. Edward had left to talk with Ty, but Paige came in to help the two women.
"Cut the camera a minute, Bob," she said. "Sora, can I ask you something on- camera? You're not too shy about what happened to your father, right?"
"Um...I guess so," Sora blinked. He knew that Terra would never have consented, but still, it seemed the right thing to do. "I'm glad you warned me."
"No problem," she grinned. "Bob, start up again."
Sora continued rolling the wall in the strawberry pink color Edward had chosen for the kitchen. Up, down, up, down. White became pink. White. Pink. White. Pink. Pink. Pink.
"So, Sora," Paige said. "I hear that you were quite the hero. You were eight, right?"
"Yes."
"How did you manage it all?"
"I don't know...all I cared about was my dad," Sora said. He tried to think how Terra would say this, and tried to stay true to it. "How much he cared about that house. The fire coming closer, ever closer. Mom and Al left, but I hid away in the kitchen..."
Sora recounted the tale in its entirety, feeling all eyes on him. And yet, it felt like he had toi say this, say it to the world, to get it out of him. As if it really had happened to him. It sounds crazy, but he felt as if he had amnesia, and slowly was remembering something important to him through telling the tale.
In fact, he had.
He just didn't know it.
***
The boat soared, sliced the water clean, leaving ripples in its wake. Kairi had seen it first, but now Terra watched. Riku's eyes narrowed at it. Ever closer, ever nearer. Now Terra could faintly hear its motor roar, see the outline of a man dressed in a black cloak, his face hidden in a deep hood.
Who was it?
Why was he here?
Surely it wasn't Ansem. Was it?
"Anomaly!" he shouted over the winds. He ripped the hood from his head, revealing brown, scruffy hair, a scar, and a well-defined face. He was probably about nineteen, and
Terra knew him. Terra knew him very well.
Because Squall Lionheart had always reminded her of herself.
"Anomaly, what have you done?" he gunned the engine the last twenty feet, then cut it dead at the raft side. In one smooth movement, he tied the speedboat to the mast and was glaring at Riku before anyone could say a word.
"Nothing any other would not have done," he replied, crossing his arms. "What's it to you, Leon?"
"What's it to me?"
His glare shot to Terra, then returned to Riku.
"She isn't the Keyblade Master. The timeline has been altered, if we don't get him here and ready to fight, we will lose our chance to survive! Have you gone mad?!"
"She is the rightful Master," Riku said, calm. "If you had only waited, you would realize that. Sora was a soul replacement when the mistake was made. The timeline before was wrong, Leon. It was wrong."
Leon glared at Terra again. "You screw up, woman, and it will be you who pays the consequences."
"Wha-What?" Kairi glanced between us all.
"I'd like to see," said Leon, smirking. "How this works, when the seventh princess' heart is lost."
Leon descended into his boat, as Riku sliced the rope holding it to the mast. The engine gunned again and Leon flew into a black portal. Riku sighed deeply, glancing to Terra, to Kairi, and returned his troubled aqua eyes to the approaching island.
"What's going on?" Kairi asked. "Who was that? You guys know him. What was he talking about?"
"Kai . . . "
Terra put her back to them both, running a quick hand through her hair. Her throat closed in on itself. It was hard to cry, so hard for the tears to wet her eyes. Terra had not shed a tear in such a long time. The liquid just did not form as it had. Maybe it was biological.
She didn't know. But even now it was hard to cry.
Hard to say everything she meant to say.
Why had she come here?
Why?
"I...I'm sorry, Kairi," she choked. "I'm so sorry...I should...I wish..."
"It's not your fault, TJ," Riku whispered, barely audible. "It's Blank, Sora, me, and—"
"Wa-wa-wait," Kairi waved her hands around, stopping him. "It's no one's fault. I don't care why what is happening is happening. I want to know why you didn't tell me and why that guy was saying that you did something wrong."
Riku opened his mouth and swallowed a wave of salt water. The water rolled over the raft, soaking all three occupants and sending the box of coconuts overboard. Terra came up sputtering, hugging the mast. With a shake of his silver mane, Riku leaped to the mast and pulled the ropes around the sail, cutting wind.
"Paddle! We need to get to the island!"
"Go! Go!"
Paddles in hand, the trio scooped water back, propelling them forward. On to the island that offered greater protection than the raft they floated on. Riku shouted "STROKE!" over the winds, and at last, the paddles touched two feet into the sandy bottom.
Riku and Terra grabbed the ropes holding the raft together and hauled it on the beach. Kairi jumped off and shoved it from behind, far up into the thicket of palms. Rain spattered on the white sand, graying a colored world.
"Oh, my God, omigod, omigod, it's Andrew all over again," Terra whispered as she dove into a cave behind Kairi and Riku, using the raft as a leaning door.
"We should be safe in here," Riku said.
He stared at the wall of the cave. Kairi's head cocked to the side, but Terra knew the look on his face. Guilt. Guilty over what was the question in her mind. He was the only one there who really knew what, at least mostly, was going on. Information had been withheld from herself, from Kairi, probably from Sora, Al, Renee, and a thousand others who were entwined in the lives of Terra Jem and Sora.
"Safe from a storm, perhaps."
A new voice penetrated the walls of the cave. Kairi fell back on the floor in surprise, and Terra quickly followed suit. Riku, however, grit his teeth. His eyes roamed the stalactites and stalagmites of the small cave.
For a few moments, nothing but the swish of his silver hair and the pit-pat of the rain and the howling wind could be heard. A peculiar smell met Terra's nostrils, that of nothing she had ever sensed before. Like a combination between wet dog and cold steel, but strangely sweet, like cinnamon or brown sugar cookies.
"You think you're so smart, Anomaly," said the disembodied voice silkily, a feminine curve Terra had never quite achieved herself. "To have brought the true Keyblade Master to this world, to have organized the perfect plan of action for the seventh princess, to have avoided, perhaps, the paradox that is Kingdom Hearts.
"But hear me now, Anomaly, should you succeed, a great blessing will fall in this world and the other. Should you succeed. Now, there is the little trouble of the seventh princess, you know."
"What?" Terra shouted. "Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish?"
"Keyblade Master, this is none of your concern."
"Of course it is," she smiled. "You're talking about my friend, to him, right in front of me. I may not understand everything, but I know enough to say that I don't like where you're going with this."
"Your friend, eh?" the voice laughed aloud, high and slightly squeaky, ringing against the cave walls. "We shall see, Keyblade Master, we shall see. Do you recall that game you played once, the first one you completed?"
"Yeah, Final Fantasy IX, of course," Terra blinked at the wall. "Why?"
"Keep it in mind, Keyblade Master. As for you, Anomaly, I see that you did, indeed, overlook the safety of the seventh princess. Were you expecting maybe to save her before she was taken away to Hollow Bastion? Or perhaps that your sharp-tongued 'friend' would turn lesbian and take her in her heart? I doubt the latter."
"Hey! I like lesbians!"
"I know you do," chuckled the voice. "But you yourself are not one, Keyblade Master. My point is, Anomaly, I will keep the Seventh safe, for a price."
"What price would that be?" Riku said, glancing at Kairi out of the corner of his eye. Terra knew in that instant that he loved Kairi. He loved her more than anything or anyone in the world, in that one glance.
"Let Sora and Al see it."
Neither Terra nor Riku could see the disembodied voice's face, but they knew from its sound that she was smirking. With one glance at Riku, Terra knew that this was not a part of the plan. This was not the way he'd meant it to play out. He hadn't wanted to be played this time.
He didn't want this to be a game.
A game.
"Granted," Riku said, his voice stone.
"Wait, that isn't fair!" Terra shouted. "You caught him 'tween a rock and a hard place, you! Why do you want my brother and Sora to be able to play a game and watch us here? Is this just a game to you? Is it a game!?"
"Yes, Keyblade Master. A game. It has always been as such."
The voice laughed. The steady pit-pat pit-pat of the rain returned, drowning them all in the loudest of all silences. Kairi glanced between them, smoothing her short skirt gently with one hand.
"What is going on?"
**** What's up with these voices?
Chapter 6: Many Voices
Sora and Mom (Freda) raced up into Blank's house, Sora for the first time. The room was as open as anything, all with wooden floors and all painted differing shades of blues. It reminded Sora a bit of his room, with all that green. Blank had told him what the technique was called—monochrome. He didn't like the idea very much, and it called true here as well.
Edward, a man with long, slick graying hair tied back at the nape, was seated at the coffee table, rummaging through a stack of paintings—Blank's. Sora knew they were Blank's only because she'd shown him similar works. Always dark, always mysterious, and always a woman portrayed off to the right or left. Usually, they were personas representing herself, Sora, or Renee, a friend Sora had as of yet to meet.
"Three teenage artists and not a single one of their pieces up in here..." he muttered under his breath. Sora cleared his throat gently.
"Hey, Sora, Freda, well. What do you see happening in this room?"
"Color!" Mom shouted at once. Her eyes had gone a frightening shade of violet, her hands clasped, lips twisted in a maniac sort of grin.
"Color, good, Sora?"
"Separation, and perhaps art," he said. "This room needs to reflect Blank—and she's not a canvas."
"Precisely what I was thinking," Edward grinned. "We are going to separate the rooms, I have an interesting valance idea, and paint the furniture, and a surprise."
"What's the surprise?" Sora asked warily. He'd watched just enough of Edward's designs to know to watch out for his "surprises."
"Let's clear out the room, starting with the small things."
Edward glanced at Sora, with her missing lashes and eyebrow, then at her mother. His hands expertly loosened the top of the paint cans, six gallons of it. Pints surrounded him, accent colors that would all "contradict," as he'd said.
"Any guesses what the living room color is?" he asked.
"Um...red," Sora guessed.
"Black or white," Mom said. Sora and Edward stared. "What? It goes with Blank."
He removed the top, revealing a luscious shade of aqua. Nearly the same color as Kyle and Blank's eyes.
"Well, er..."
"I love it!" Freda shouted at once, drowning out Sora's voice. Sora silently agreed with her.
He unveiled the remaining colors, each to paint a part of the house. Sora was in charge of the kitchen and dining rooms, approximately half of the room. Edward had left to talk with Ty, but Paige came in to help the two women.
"Cut the camera a minute, Bob," she said. "Sora, can I ask you something on- camera? You're not too shy about what happened to your father, right?"
"Um...I guess so," Sora blinked. He knew that Terra would never have consented, but still, it seemed the right thing to do. "I'm glad you warned me."
"No problem," she grinned. "Bob, start up again."
Sora continued rolling the wall in the strawberry pink color Edward had chosen for the kitchen. Up, down, up, down. White became pink. White. Pink. White. Pink. Pink. Pink.
"So, Sora," Paige said. "I hear that you were quite the hero. You were eight, right?"
"Yes."
"How did you manage it all?"
"I don't know...all I cared about was my dad," Sora said. He tried to think how Terra would say this, and tried to stay true to it. "How much he cared about that house. The fire coming closer, ever closer. Mom and Al left, but I hid away in the kitchen..."
Sora recounted the tale in its entirety, feeling all eyes on him. And yet, it felt like he had toi say this, say it to the world, to get it out of him. As if it really had happened to him. It sounds crazy, but he felt as if he had amnesia, and slowly was remembering something important to him through telling the tale.
In fact, he had.
He just didn't know it.
***
The boat soared, sliced the water clean, leaving ripples in its wake. Kairi had seen it first, but now Terra watched. Riku's eyes narrowed at it. Ever closer, ever nearer. Now Terra could faintly hear its motor roar, see the outline of a man dressed in a black cloak, his face hidden in a deep hood.
Who was it?
Why was he here?
Surely it wasn't Ansem. Was it?
"Anomaly!" he shouted over the winds. He ripped the hood from his head, revealing brown, scruffy hair, a scar, and a well-defined face. He was probably about nineteen, and
Terra knew him. Terra knew him very well.
Because Squall Lionheart had always reminded her of herself.
"Anomaly, what have you done?" he gunned the engine the last twenty feet, then cut it dead at the raft side. In one smooth movement, he tied the speedboat to the mast and was glaring at Riku before anyone could say a word.
"Nothing any other would not have done," he replied, crossing his arms. "What's it to you, Leon?"
"What's it to me?"
His glare shot to Terra, then returned to Riku.
"She isn't the Keyblade Master. The timeline has been altered, if we don't get him here and ready to fight, we will lose our chance to survive! Have you gone mad?!"
"She is the rightful Master," Riku said, calm. "If you had only waited, you would realize that. Sora was a soul replacement when the mistake was made. The timeline before was wrong, Leon. It was wrong."
Leon glared at Terra again. "You screw up, woman, and it will be you who pays the consequences."
"Wha-What?" Kairi glanced between us all.
"I'd like to see," said Leon, smirking. "How this works, when the seventh princess' heart is lost."
Leon descended into his boat, as Riku sliced the rope holding it to the mast. The engine gunned again and Leon flew into a black portal. Riku sighed deeply, glancing to Terra, to Kairi, and returned his troubled aqua eyes to the approaching island.
"What's going on?" Kairi asked. "Who was that? You guys know him. What was he talking about?"
"Kai . . . "
Terra put her back to them both, running a quick hand through her hair. Her throat closed in on itself. It was hard to cry, so hard for the tears to wet her eyes. Terra had not shed a tear in such a long time. The liquid just did not form as it had. Maybe it was biological.
She didn't know. But even now it was hard to cry.
Hard to say everything she meant to say.
Why had she come here?
Why?
"I...I'm sorry, Kairi," she choked. "I'm so sorry...I should...I wish..."
"It's not your fault, TJ," Riku whispered, barely audible. "It's Blank, Sora, me, and—"
"Wa-wa-wait," Kairi waved her hands around, stopping him. "It's no one's fault. I don't care why what is happening is happening. I want to know why you didn't tell me and why that guy was saying that you did something wrong."
Riku opened his mouth and swallowed a wave of salt water. The water rolled over the raft, soaking all three occupants and sending the box of coconuts overboard. Terra came up sputtering, hugging the mast. With a shake of his silver mane, Riku leaped to the mast and pulled the ropes around the sail, cutting wind.
"Paddle! We need to get to the island!"
"Go! Go!"
Paddles in hand, the trio scooped water back, propelling them forward. On to the island that offered greater protection than the raft they floated on. Riku shouted "STROKE!" over the winds, and at last, the paddles touched two feet into the sandy bottom.
Riku and Terra grabbed the ropes holding the raft together and hauled it on the beach. Kairi jumped off and shoved it from behind, far up into the thicket of palms. Rain spattered on the white sand, graying a colored world.
"Oh, my God, omigod, omigod, it's Andrew all over again," Terra whispered as she dove into a cave behind Kairi and Riku, using the raft as a leaning door.
"We should be safe in here," Riku said.
He stared at the wall of the cave. Kairi's head cocked to the side, but Terra knew the look on his face. Guilt. Guilty over what was the question in her mind. He was the only one there who really knew what, at least mostly, was going on. Information had been withheld from herself, from Kairi, probably from Sora, Al, Renee, and a thousand others who were entwined in the lives of Terra Jem and Sora.
"Safe from a storm, perhaps."
A new voice penetrated the walls of the cave. Kairi fell back on the floor in surprise, and Terra quickly followed suit. Riku, however, grit his teeth. His eyes roamed the stalactites and stalagmites of the small cave.
For a few moments, nothing but the swish of his silver hair and the pit-pat of the rain and the howling wind could be heard. A peculiar smell met Terra's nostrils, that of nothing she had ever sensed before. Like a combination between wet dog and cold steel, but strangely sweet, like cinnamon or brown sugar cookies.
"You think you're so smart, Anomaly," said the disembodied voice silkily, a feminine curve Terra had never quite achieved herself. "To have brought the true Keyblade Master to this world, to have organized the perfect plan of action for the seventh princess, to have avoided, perhaps, the paradox that is Kingdom Hearts.
"But hear me now, Anomaly, should you succeed, a great blessing will fall in this world and the other. Should you succeed. Now, there is the little trouble of the seventh princess, you know."
"What?" Terra shouted. "Who are you? What are you trying to accomplish?"
"Keyblade Master, this is none of your concern."
"Of course it is," she smiled. "You're talking about my friend, to him, right in front of me. I may not understand everything, but I know enough to say that I don't like where you're going with this."
"Your friend, eh?" the voice laughed aloud, high and slightly squeaky, ringing against the cave walls. "We shall see, Keyblade Master, we shall see. Do you recall that game you played once, the first one you completed?"
"Yeah, Final Fantasy IX, of course," Terra blinked at the wall. "Why?"
"Keep it in mind, Keyblade Master. As for you, Anomaly, I see that you did, indeed, overlook the safety of the seventh princess. Were you expecting maybe to save her before she was taken away to Hollow Bastion? Or perhaps that your sharp-tongued 'friend' would turn lesbian and take her in her heart? I doubt the latter."
"Hey! I like lesbians!"
"I know you do," chuckled the voice. "But you yourself are not one, Keyblade Master. My point is, Anomaly, I will keep the Seventh safe, for a price."
"What price would that be?" Riku said, glancing at Kairi out of the corner of his eye. Terra knew in that instant that he loved Kairi. He loved her more than anything or anyone in the world, in that one glance.
"Let Sora and Al see it."
Neither Terra nor Riku could see the disembodied voice's face, but they knew from its sound that she was smirking. With one glance at Riku, Terra knew that this was not a part of the plan. This was not the way he'd meant it to play out. He hadn't wanted to be played this time.
He didn't want this to be a game.
A game.
"Granted," Riku said, his voice stone.
"Wait, that isn't fair!" Terra shouted. "You caught him 'tween a rock and a hard place, you! Why do you want my brother and Sora to be able to play a game and watch us here? Is this just a game to you? Is it a game!?"
"Yes, Keyblade Master. A game. It has always been as such."
The voice laughed. The steady pit-pat pit-pat of the rain returned, drowning them all in the loudest of all silences. Kairi glanced between them, smoothing her short skirt gently with one hand.
"What is going on?"
**** What's up with these voices?