Calm before the Storm

A Kingdom Hearts fanfic

By:

Chison

Everyone stood, gazing at the star, then Marlena turned to Leon, "does Cid have a Gummi ship we can use?" Yuffie turned to Marlena, "I don't know, but he is always working in the basement of the house, just down the stairs and in the wall." Marlena gave a nod, and grabbed Zashi by the hand and led him down the stairs, giving a wave to everyone, "Marlena? What are you doing?" Reaching the door together, she stopped, "I just want to get home…its nice meeting everyone…but I want to go home…the sooner the better…" Zashi gave a nod, and placed his hand on the door, and turned the handle and opened it, but a massive cloud of smoke greeted him, along with loud coughing. A gruff, male voice was heard shouting to himself. "Dang! I almost had that engine running!"

Marlena and Zashi waved the smoke away from their faces and walked into the room, which was a large rectangular room, with a set of stairs leading into the workshop. "oh! Zashi and…" the man extended a hand to Marlena, who shook it and gave her name, "Oh! Right! You're the first one to ask me about Zashi here… Anyway, what do you need?" The duo looked at each other, and Zashi spoke, "Cid…we need a Gummi ship." Cid's excitement drained. "I only have one I am currently working on…but I can't get the engines to fire…" He turned his back on them, and motioned to follow, and walked toward a large object draped with a sheet. "Its not working right now so don't get excited…" Cid said as he placed his hands onto the sheet, and in one swift motion, he pulled it off, revealing a sleek, two winged Gummi ship. "Cid…" Marlena said as she walked toward it, placing her hands on the surface, "this is amazing…" Zashi's attention had wandered from the ship to the rest of the room, which was filled with numerous Gummi blocks, computers, and a giant cylinder. Walking over to the cylinder, Zashi pointed to it and turned to Cid, "Is this the engine?" Cid looked, and brushed his right thumb against his nose and walked to the engine, "Yes. Like I said before, I'm havin' a hard time getting the engine to fire…"

The Gummi ship was painted in silver, with two rings of black around each of the wings, and the cockpit, which Cid had climbed into, and started flipping switches, and turning knobs, he got out and said, "Listen, I am going to fire the engines again, move out of the way." With that, Marlena and Zashi moved to the walls, while in the cockpit, Cid had pushed a red button, the engine roared to life, but there was no thrust, and it simply died. "Well…that was better than the last few tests…" Cid claimed as he turned in the cockpit and pulled out a crystal, and climbed out, showing the crystal to the pair, "look, this blaze gem has enough energy to turn on the engine, but it wont give it the thrust to leave the world…"

Thinking for a moment, Marlena put a hand to her chin in thought and said, "well…what if you had a spark to start it?" Cid lightly laughed, "In order to 'spark' the engine I would need at least a flame of 2500 degrees, or roughly 900 blaze gems." Zashi's mouth dropped at the amount, and stood dumbfounded, "well… I know some magic…I might be able to do something…" Marlena said, while Cid placed a hand on his chin, "what kind of magic do you know? Fire?" She gave a nod, "It might work…" Marlena said, then Cid asked, "can you focus it into a beam of fire?" She looked off into another part of the room, "I think I can…" Cid put a hand on her shoulder, "Ill give you a shot at this, Zashi you need to move to the stairwell, since you might get burned." Moving slowly, Zashi watched Marlena and Cid get ready for the test, where at one end was a large, round metal sheet, attached to a computer.

"All right kid, whenever you're ready." Cid gave her the thumbs up, and Marlena held out her right hand and summoned her keyblade, and pointed it towards the sheet, and chanted a few words, and a small flame formed at the tip of the weapon. Suddenly, a brilliant beam of fire shot from the keyblade to the metal sheet, however it was not focused, but with great effort, Marlena managed to focus the fire into a single beam about two feet around. "Great! You can stop now." Cid shouted over the noise of the flames, and they simply died out, "So? Is it good enough?" Zashi asked from the stairwell, but Cid was already hard at work on his computer, calculating and turned to each of them, "Its enough, but you need to hold the flame for at least 15 seconds to start the engine." Marlena was exhausted from the ordeal, and slumped to her knees, breathing heavily, "I'm not too sure I can hold the flame for 15 seconds…but I will try…but right now…I need some sleep…" with that, she fell face forward onto the floor, despite the shouts of Zashi and Cid.

Zashi rushed to Marlena's side and picked up her head, and Cid came to her side, "its all right…she has only passed out…we had better get her to a bed in the house." Cid said as he grabbed her arms, "Zashi get her legs." He did as he was told, and they made their way slowly out of the workshop and up the flight of stairs towards the small house, and were greeted by Aerith, who quickly made a bed for Marlena to rest on, and whipped up some tea for the guys to drink, "Cid…what happened down there?" Aerith asked, wanting a suitable answer, "She wanted to help with the engine, so I let her…I didn't know something like this would happen." Zashi quietly pulled up a chair and sat beside Marlena, simply watching her rest, Aerith noticed and quickly shooed Cid out of the house, "I will be waiting outside, call if you need anything." Aerith said with a smile, which comforted Zashi, and he turned his attention back to Marlena; however his eye lids had also grown heavy, and he fell asleep in the chair.