For several days, Hayner, Pence and Olette watched steadily for the ghost train.
"It's the best chance we've got." Pence said. "No other angle makes as much sense."
"Do you really think that Roxas is out there somewhere?" Olette said whimsically. "Somewhere, on another world, happy without us?"
Once the initial confusion and frustration had passed over, a plague of guilt and blame started to spread. Had Roxas abandoned them? Or did he feel that they had abandoned him by forgetting? On one hand, if he had been kidnapped and forced to leave against his will, then they all were guilty of failing him as friends, for not even trying to come to his aid sooner. On the other hand, what if he had simply moved on to bigger and better things?
Which was worse: the idea of him struggling in some distant land in need of their help, or the idea that he no longer needed, or wanted, any of them?
The entire town was now on alert for any suspicious behavior. Sure, Roxas had been targeted specifically, but what if someone else became a target? People weren't taking any chances, and if not for their already adept authority-avoiding skills, the trio would have never been able to keep such an alert watch on the comings and goings of the trains. Not that their behavior went unnoticed.
"Do you suppose they've given up on their little friend?" Fuu wondered. She would have expected them all to be continuing to comb the area, or at least try to, and to start getting in the way of the real search effort. Hayner, at least, should have thrown a fit by now, and yet, all the adults who were supposed to be keeping an eye on them remained un-mauled. He sat there with his two little friends in front of the train station, apparently very interested in the printouts of the schedules.
"May be they're thinking of looking in other towns. You know, going from train to train showing pictures or something?" Vivi said.
Seifer just snorted. He had a gut feeling that those brats were up to trouble again. Or may be that was sour-tummy. Sometimes it was hard to tell.
For the most part people left the three kids alone. No one bothered to ask them why they had moved their usual meeting place from on top of the station to down inside it. That gave them all time to consider theories on how to summon and get aboard the ghost train.
"Maybe it arrives only for certain people. If that's the case, then we'll never find it, because we're not anybody special. But, if it's a matter of knowing a certain code or hand shake or having a certain item, then we're almost equally screwed, because we have no idea what that may be." Pence attacked the problem logically.
"We've got to believe that something's going to get us on there." Olette said " 'Can't never could,' we've got to stay positive." But the fact that they were playing the waiting game got on all their nerves. They set up watch, someone there at all times, while the other two searched of clues, and attended school and such. Their parents didn't like this too much, so they all knew they had to hurry. Pence and Olette spent an entire afternoon staring over Sunset Hill, trying to spot a train with no driver. And Hayner broke into the mansion one night to see what he could find.
"It was a wasted trip." He confided to them. "I don't know anything about computers or magic or anything. I could have been sitting on our ticket to where ever, and never even known."
"I don't think that we'll find the pass to the ghost train in the mansion." Said Pence. "Roxas never went in there. Sora did, but he didn't summon the train on his own. He needed the help of that midget in the black cloak."
Hayner looked struck. Pence didn't think that he would have taken the dismissal of that particular plot so harshly.
"Something wrong?" Pence asked.
"No. Maybe. I need to see something." Hayner was definitely distracted.
It took an exercise of Olette's pick-pocketing skills to get Hayner to calm down. He demanded a copy of the police report on Roxas, and she dutifully began targeting adults with papers in their hands to get him one. Six hours, a list of volunteers, a couple of maps, some badly written poetry, a stack of restaurant menus and a dirty magazine later, Hayner triumphantly presented his amazing revelation.
"Look at what he's wearing." Hayner said. "You can't see all of it, because it doesn't go below his chest, but you can see around his shoulders and front. Remember the midget? He had on this black-zippered-hoodie thing."
"It's the same." Olette gasped. "It's that same tacky cloak. Right down to the zipper-pulls."
"It could be a coincidence." Pence pointed out. "It's not like any of us own all custom made clothes, and we've all probably gone, 'hey, I have that same shirt' at one time or another."
"Oh. Right." Olette sounded disappointed, but Hayner remained thoughtful.
"Hey, guys?"
"Yeah?"
"Why is this picture here?"
"Uhh…because it's a mugshot? Because someone put it there? What kind of answer are you looking for?"
"Why is this the only other picture of Roxas that we have? I mean, besides that one that has all of us? When those…things…started stealing photos, we got them all back, but this one wasn't in there. And why can't we find any of those photo's now? Did those things come back for them?"
Nobody had any answers. They sat on the benches in the train station, doing homework and listening to Pence's radio until late into the evening.
Seifer was the one who interrupted them. He looked dogged down, a little tired, but mostly annoyed, pent up, like an animal in a cage. He and his followers easily surrounded the trio, who had their backs to a wall.
"I've put up with a lot of shit from you three." He started to talk after staring down Hayner. "Lord knows your shenanigans have driven me up a wall in the past. Time and time again I've been astounded by the stupidity and childishness of your actions."
The other three members of the committee were a little amazed with what their boss was getting away with. Usually one (coughHaynercough) or more of them would have been on their feet hurling insults back by now.
"At this point, I'm reminded of that old saying 'silence is more suspicious than noise.' And so here I am, finding out what this silence is all about."
Hayner offhandedly made a very rude suggestion. Seifer didn't care.
"Somebody's going to tell me what's going on, or I'm going to put a stop to this right now."
"Homework." Pence said, brandishing a page of math problems. "There's no crime in that."
"Ah, but you don't need to be doing that here."
"Don't need to. Want to. And there's nothing you can do to stop us. We haven't been doing anything wrong." Hayner sneered.
"Oh, but I can. Your parents have told me that you've all been out late recently. So not only can I drag you over to them, but I can have you all in community service for breaking curfew. So either you tell me what you've been doing here, or you're not going to have any free time for a looong while."
"Meh."
"CENSORED you."
"You wouldn't believe us if you told you."
It was time for a different approach. "Going somewhere? Planning a trip?" he eyed the schedule printout that was scribbled on.
"It doesn't matter."
"It'll matter to your parents."
"Which won't matter to us."
Hayner and Seifer were in a staredown again.
"Acting bull headed won't bring him back." Seifer said softly.
Hayner maintained eye contact, but his heart wasn't in it. On either side of him, Pence and Olette gathered up their things. A hand on Hayner's shoulder brought him out of the staring contest, and the three kids filed out of the station, brushing past Vivi.
Behind them, Seifer was royally pissed off. "Dammit." He said. "Why can't those three just let us in on what they know!"
"I thought you said that they wouldn't with hold information." Fuu pointed out.
"That was before. I was certain they had told us all they knew. But now…" he sighed and slumped "either they've found something new, or they've figured out something."
"I don't see why you're so surprised." Vivi said. "They knew him best. And it's not like they trust us. We're probably the last place they'd go for help."
"But where would they go, if not us or the police or their parents?" Fuu wanted to know.
"Each other. They trust each other. That's how a street punk, a rich kid, and a fat geek can be such good friends." Vivi, as usual, was more insightful than the others.
"What do you suppose she meant by 'you wouldn't believe us if we told you?'"
Vivi thought for a minute, and then shared his thoughts. "It's probably something weird, like the word thief or those funny white attackers. Something that, under normal circumstances, no one in their right mind would believe."
"Which means, in this case, it's all the more likely to be true." Seifer pointed out. "and important."
"This is getting us nowhere." Hayner cried. "We need a signal or a key or a name or something to get that train here."
"I hate to say it." Pence said. "But it may be time to have another look inside the mansion."
"Are you serious?" Olette asked "I mean, we've gotten in trouble before, but we've never done anything really illegal. What if we get caught?"
"The only way they can catch us is to come inside with us. And the moment anyone with any sort of authority sees what's inside that basement, they'll be more interested in what sort of freaky weird shit they were doing down there than any little thing we may be charged with." Hayner was firm in his resolve. He had had a feeling that it would come to this.
"I didn't get to have a very good look around last time we were in there." Pence said. "But it looks like we're out of options. Besides, if we don't do it, no one else is going to."
"I guess that's true." Olette said.
"It'll be okay." Pence said. "No one's going to be around, and we'll go in the middle of the day, so that no one will even notice us missing."
Bear with me. This is about to get good.
