4
Vexen
Heartless.
I had spent the past few years around them, studying them for signs of humanity, to discover if they truly were all darkness. That had been my assignment before the sage Ansem had disappeared, before the dark days.
It used to be that I was in charge of discovering the good in Heartless, if there was any. I had seen the Heartless forged from our greatest champions, after they had succumbed to the darkness. Ansem had asked me to study them, to discover how much was dark, how much was light. There was Hojo, he was in charge of the subdivisions that studied Ansem's synthetic Heartless. Whenever I could I volunteered my time there. So much to do, I had fun rigging experiments for the two types to complete, or analyze. I envied Hojo's job. Not that mine wasn't without fulfillment, I actually preffered my subject area, analyzing the darkness and light that way, it's just my experiments always yielded the same results, at least Hojo's had unpredictability.
But that was before the war. Now all of us involved with Ansem's project had to work with the bio-warfare department. What was worse was that Ansem himself was gone, his timing was the same time the Heartless appeared, we can only assume he was taken by the darkness, a true defender of the people to the last. We tried day and night to come up with a way to stop the Heartless, but no solution ever came. It was awful. Only a few weeks, and we hadn't even managed a half-baked defense. Pitiful really, the army had been in big trouble. Now we were backed into the Bastion. That was all that was left of our beautful world, this tiny corner of it was left, surrounded on all sides, we had seen two non-Heartless with them, a woman, gray, aged, somehow, like she was holding herself together with nothing. She carried a staff, with a green jewel set into its top. The only name she had to us was "witch". Another being, a brown cloaked figure, always stood by her side. Who was in charge, we couldn't tell. But whoever it was, they had beaten us.
It was during one of my many hopeless stupors I wandered around, and entered the courtyard. I looked over and saw a blonde-haired man fitting little cubes together. Cid was commissioned by the Guard to get us off this rock. There was nothing we could do, we knew that the Heartless were searching for something. Hojo had called it a "keyhole". We looked through Ansem's notes, all we found was a description. He hadn't left directions how to reach it, nevermind how to keep the Heartless from it. It didn't matter. I looked back from the sky and saw Cid talking with the newly appointed Captain of the Guard, a young kid named Squall. Squall was a military man, if somewhat wet behind the ears, and Cid, well Cid always had a reputation for undermining authority. I decided perhaps I could be better use anywhere than my assignment, and walked over.
"How's it goin'?" Cid nodded in my general direction.
"Any luck?" Squall asked, yet one could detect the hopelessness he betrayed in his voice.
"No more than usual." I responded, undoubtedly equally depressed in my tone. "What's the status of the Gummi ship?"
"Well, I think we might just get 'er done before this place gets swallowed," said Cid. "It'll be close, but if anyone can handle it, I can."
Squall put his hand to his face, almost as if tired of Cid's cockiness, but I have to admit, it wasn't without merit, for either of them for that matter.
"How many will the gummi ship be able to hold?" Squall asked.
"Depends how much time you can give me," answered Cid doubtfully. "Right now, I can hold maybe three or four, I can add a couple layers here and there each day, this stuff is very flexible and easy to form." He scratched his head, cigarette almost burned out in his mouth. "How many do we need?"
"Only three children left," said Squall, "This Cloud kid, a girl named Aerith, and a toddler, Yuffie. None of them have parents anymore. Everyone else is expendable, the bigger she gets the more can get off."
"Wrong, kid," countered Cid, "you too. You might not like it, you're still a child, teenager, but still a child. I'm puttin' you in this thing too."
Squall didn't seem to happy with Cid's blunt attitude, but I decided to step in, "I agree. You should get in too when it's ready." He scowled a bit, but went off as if to silently concede his defeat.
"Oh well, better get back to work." said Cid, and he went back to the strange gummi blocks that appeared with the Heartless.
I went off to my own studies. A slim chance might exist to beat the Heartless, but I didn't honestly believe so. But I kept telling myself that there was, so I might go on, hopefully to buy Cid enough time to get us all inside his ship.