A/N: Hi, me again, sorry for not updating in a century or two. Or ten... I don't really like this chapter, it's just kind of there as filler and we got to get Riku OOC, purely for the fun of it. Besides, it's kind of cute, so yeah... Anyway, read and review please, I really really really want to hear your opinions on this fic! I honestly think it's one of my best. And tell me if there are any typos, I want to get those fixed ASAP!


The ship's landing was almost as rough as the take off, but Riku still completely enjoyed every minute of the flight. Cloud had touched down the ship on the edge of a forest since that was the clearest patch of ground near the world's only settlement. The world didn't have it's own Gummi port, so they were forced to improvise. Kage assured Riku that landing in ports was a lot smoother than landing on open ground.

Riku kept an eye on Kage and Cloud since both were more familiar with what to do and how to act on other worlds than he was, and he saw that Kage kept one hand on her knives and her eyes kept darting about, as though she was searching for something.

"I hate being out in the open like this," she said, her eyes still seaking a threat that wasn't there. "I feel like I'm gonna get shot in the back at any minute. Where's the town, aniki? I wanna get there as soon as possible."

"Just a couple miles in from here," Cloud said. "If it was just you and me, I'd say it'd take us a couple hours to get there. But since Riku's with us, I'd guess we won't get there until nightfall."

"Let's get started then," Kage said, starting in to the trees. "C'mon, Riku. Part of the delay's gonna be me teaching you some basic survival skills. First off, tracking."

"I can track just fine," Riku protested.

"In the woods?" Kage asked, giving him an odd look. "I'm sure you were fine on the islands, but frankly, this isn't the tropics and there are a ton of completely different animals here than there were back home. It's a completely different world out here, Riku, no pun intended, and you gotta know this stuff or it'll take us ages to find Kairi."

"Preach it, midget," Cloud said, walking right past her and into the trees. "I'll mark the path for you, so all you have to do is follow. I'll take a break in about an hour. If you two don't catch up by noon, I'll go on ahead. Scream if you need me."

"Gotcha," Kage said with a nod. "So, Riku, shall we start?"

"You know more about this than I do," Riku admitted. "Do I really have a choice?"

"Actually, yes, you do have a choice," Kage informed him. "Either I can teach you and try to make it as easy as possible for you to learn, or I can just traipse right ahead into the forest, catch up with Cloud in about five minutes, and leave you to figure out the hard way what the heck I did. Unless you'd rather stay with the ship?"

"No, I wouldn't rather stay with the ship," Riku snapped, then sighed and ran a hand through his hair in frustration. "Sorry. It's just I feel kind of useless right now."

"In all honesty, you are kind of useless right now," Kage said matter-of-factly. "The keyword here is 'kind of.' Okay, so that was two words. The point is, I know you can learn what to do and how to do it really quickly with the right teacher, and I also know that if it comes to a scuffle, I'll more than likely need you at my back. The Heartless tend to travel in swarms and I can't hold them off on my own. It's not that I'm tryin' to be harsh or scare you away or anything, it's that you need to know this and you need to know it now because Kairi may not have enough time for me to go into extreme detail on this stuff, or for you to take your time learning it."

"How do you know how much time Kairi has?" Riku asked, still slightly resentful of the fact that he was basically worthless.

"I don't, but I've always been taught to assume the worst," Kage admitted. "In this case, we might even already be out of time, but we're gonna keep looking anyway. Don't ask why, it's just a gut feeling of mine. So, shall we start, or do you wanna sit here and argue about it while Cloud gets further and further away?"

"Might as well," Riku said. "I don't want to be a hindrance, though."

"Give me about half an hour," Kage said. "Then you'll be about as much hindrance as a horse." She led Riku down the path that Cloud had marked, not even bothering to elaborate on her last odd statement, and all the while pointing out and explaining the basics of tracking in a forest, then moving on to specifics, particularly whenever they ran across tracks that weren't Cloud's. In the half hour that Kage promised, Riku did learn quite a bit about tracking, even learning how to move fairly silently through the trees. Still, compared to Kage, he was a blundering idiot. She slipped from spot to spot, not really walking but more like prowling, without disturbing so much as a leaf.

"How do you do it?" Riku asked after about an hour. Kage stopped and looked back at him with a questioning look on her face. "How do you get through all this stuff withoug touching any of it?"

Kage turned back around and walked towards him, and he watched her carefully. He couldn't see any difference in the way she walked from when she was walking down a streat or on the beach, yet she never made a noise.

"Practice," she whispered, almost too softly for Riku to hear. Riku opened his mouth to ask why she was whispering, but she put a finger to his lips and made a soft shushing noise, then pointed at something over Riku's shoulder. "Turn around very slowly, and don't make any sudden moves."

Riku did exactly that, moving a lot more slowly than was probably necessary, then did his best not to gasp out loud at what he saw. It was a faun and his mother, walking just as quietly as Mizu through their forest. Further back, keeping a careful eye on the intruders to his domain, was a young buck, with only four prongs on his antlers. He stared at the humans curiously, but wasn't frightened by them, and since they weren't making any moves to hurt his doe or faun, he ignored them, and followed his family, watching out for predators. When they were out of sight, Riku turned back around to find Mizu staring after them with a slight smile on her face.

"Something I was told a couple years ago," Kage said, still enraptured by the deer, "oh, three or four years I guess, is that if you truly want to walk through the forest, you must first accept it as it's own entity. Respect every plant, every twig, as though they each have a heart and soul of their own, because to one who truly knows the forest, they do. Accept the forest not as an obstacle, but as an extension of your own life, and you can move through it as easily as a deer, as silently as an owl, and as swiftly as a wolf. And so that's what I did. I accepted that the forest was a part of myself, and since then, I've been able to walk through it just like the old man had said. I even pet a deer once, I was that in tune with the trees and the plants and the animals. That's really all you have to do. The forest isn't fighting you, Riku, it isn't trying to stop you from finding Kairi. It's protecting creatures like that doe and her faun, and the buck, and thousands of other creatures that we could accidentally hurt by disregarding the forest. That's why I've been showing you how to track. So you know what animals have been through where, and so you know exactly how much life the forest protects. I've been trying to show you respect for the forest as a whole and what it symbolizes so that we can all get through this unharmed. Now, are you ready to move on, or do you want to stop and rest a while?"

"Let's move on," Riku suggested. Seeing those deer really hit Riku with the sincerity of what Mizu was saying, and it also struck a chord somewhere deep within him. To some extent, he saw himself in that young buck, and he thought he knew what Mizu was trying to get at with her little speach, so he tried to do what she had said, he tried to accept the forest as a part of himself, and he found that he was moving through the trees and underbrush just as silently and fluidly as that buck was. He never even noticed Mizu's approving and proud smile. Within an hour, they caught up to Cloud.

"That didn't take as long as I thought it would," Cloud said, sounding slightly surprised when they showed up. "Faster learner than we both thought?"

"Faster than you thought, about as fast as I thought, and we saw some deer," Mizu said, snatching up a roll and slice of cheese from what Cloud had laid out. "Frankly, if he was faster than I thought he was, I'd seriously wonder about whether or not he's really human."

"How fast did you think he was?" Cloud asked. Mizu took a huge bite of the bread and cheese and refused to answer until she had started on her third.

"Compared to him," she said, picking off a part of the cheese, "I'd say Sephiroth was pretty damn slow."

Cloud let out a low whistle and glanced in amazement at Riku. Under normal circumstances, Riku would have snapped at them to stop talking over his head like that, but he was just as hungry as Mizu and flat-out refused to talk with his mouth full.

"You identified with the buck, didn't you?" Mizu asked right when Riku swallowed. He stared at her incredulously and voiced the only thought that came to his head.

"How did you know?" he blurted. Mizu smiled.

"Because you and the buck have a lot in common," she said. "You're both young, trying to prove that you're the best you can be, and you both have something to protect. You're both highly independent and very well aware of your own strength and masculinity, and neither of you will risk your neck unless you percieve an inevitable danger."

"When you accepted the forest," Riku asked, carefully selecting his words, "what did you identify with?"

"Right after I first met the man who gave me the advice he had me watch when a mother wolf took down a couple of rabbits in the winter. She didn't eat them right away, but she brought them to her den, where her pups were to stay warm and safe. But also in that den was another nursing mother, and the hunter was providing for both her and herself. While the one was out hunting, the other allowed pups from both litters to nurse. I identified with the hunter. Like her, I was and still am willing to brave anything and everything for what I feel I need to protect, no matter what, like she felt the need to provide for the nursing mother. I can't really describe what happened, but at one point, the hunter looked straight into my eyes and my only thought was 'She's just like me.' Since then, every time I step into a forest, I think of that wolf, and how exactly alike we were, and because of that, I accept again that the forest is a part of me, and I am a part of it. It is protection, comfort, nourishment, and, to a small extent when I am identifying with the wolf again, it's almost home."

"Almost?" Riku had to ask. Mizu ran her hand through her hair in a gesture almost exactly like Cloud does, staring off into the trees.

"I used to think that wherever I was at the time was home," Mizu admitted. "It didn't matter, because I knew in my heart that I would be leaving it soon anyway. But when I arrived at the Destiny Islands, with no recollection of my past, I began to think of that as 'home.' But pretty soon after we were separated, everytime I thought of you, I got homesick. There's that saying, 'home is where the heart is,' and I--" Mizu stopped in mid sentence, blushed, and looked away.

"I'll give you two some privacy," Cloud said, standing up and walking off. When his footsteps had faded, Mizu still hadn't looked at Riku. A few minutes later, though, she finally spoke.

"I'm only home when I'm with you," she said softly, almost too soft for Riku to hear, like when she had pointed out the three deer in the woods. "I don't know when you took my heart, but I... You're the only one with any claim to it anymore, Riku."

Riku set down the roll he was eating, sighed, and leaned his head back to look at the forest's canopy, considering her words and his own feelings.

"I guess," he said after a moment, "a heart for a heart is a fair trade. I have no idea when you took mine either, but I'm glad that you did."

"All this time," Mizu said, staring at him in open astonishment, "I thought you were in love with Kairi." Riku laughed.

"I did, too," he admitted, "but I'm not. Heck, before you came, I probably was, but then you fell into my life and... And everything was right about it. More so when I'm with you. When I thanked Kairi back on the islands, I guess in my heart I was really thanking you. The words just sounded so hollow when I said them, you know? Like they were a lie. She really was the one who got me thinking about other worlds and what all was out here, but you were the one who confirmed everything for me and set my plans in motion. Most of the time while we were building the raft, all I could think about was spending time with you, and what we might see together. I wanted to be the one to find your memories for you, just so I could see you smile when they came back."

"I hope you're not angry that I found them on my own?" Kage asked.

"How could I be?" Riku countered. "You're wholly yourself for the first time since I've met you. You have your identity back. Although, to me, you'll always be that girl, who even though she couldn't remember anything about herself, never lost her willingness to go on, or her ability to laugh or smile. You'll always be my Kage, Mizu. Always."

"That's just it, isn't it?" she said, with the half-smile that had first captured his heart. "'Your' Kage. Never anyone else's. Because I let you have my heart, and you let me have yours, we will always be each other's, won't we?"

"I hope so," Riku said, returning her half-smile with a whole one of his own. Kage reached down her shirt and pulled out a seashell on a leather thong that Riku had given her as a welcoming present one night on the islands. She stared at it for a moment, her slight smile still on her face.

"You know," she said after a moment, "after I was told the legend of the poupu fruit, I used to imagine the two of us sharing it."

"Maybe in our hearts we did," Riku suggested. "And maybe that's all that the magic really needed."

"Heh, I guess you're right. I just hope that the magic never wears off."

"The legend says that the two who share the poupu remain a part of each other's lives forever," Riku pointed out. "I'm guessing that means that the magic never does wear off."

"That sounds logical."

Cloud came back into the clearing then, looked at the pair of them, sighed, and shook his head.

"This is not the scene I expected to see when I came back," he said, though Riku had a hard time telling if he was kidding or not.

"Aniki," Mizu scolded, "neither of us are the kind of kids to just jump each other at the first opportunity!"

"I was kidding, munchkin," Cloud said, smiling slightly at her. "Anyway, if you two are done, let's get moving."

"Sure," Mizu said, stuffing the rest of her bread into her mouth and standing up. "Ready, Riku? I'm pretty sure you can keep up with us now."

"Well, if you're so confident," Riku said, getting to his feet, too, "might as well, huh?"

"Bingo," Mizu said with a laugh. "Now come on, we might be able to find some clues about Kairi in town."