Ah, the next installment. Questions answered, Mysteries un-mysified, and all that jazz.
The three of them had never made such incredible speed from out of the mansion basement, out the gate, through the woods and into town. Halfway through the market district, they slowed and stopped, partially hidden in the shadows.
The old man from the station was standing under a streetlamp, glaring down at a piece of paper. Even from this distance, the three friends recognized one of the flyers that had been circling around since this whole thing began, with Roxas's face pasted over the words 'missing.' The old man seemed to find this both amusing and aggravating at the same time.
Hayner sucked up his guts and stepped out of the darkness. Olette and Pence filed behind him, and one by one nonchalantly strode past the stranger. They only had to get past him to get to the train station, and then all their questions would be answered.
"It is quite impossible for the people of this town to remember this boy." The man said suddenly.
"Keep going." Hayner whispered back at his friends. His own pace became labored but steady, as he fought down the urge to make a run for it. He knew that the other two were still winded and tired from their mad dash here. If they had to make one last sprint, then there was a good chance that he would have to leave them behind. And this was the sort of adventure that one would want company on.
His progress was halted when he walked into a wall, or at least, a really big glass pane. He bounced back, startled, and rubbed his nose as he ran one hand over the invisible barrier. He could see the station plaza just around the corner, almost there…
Olette and Pence found the obstacle most demoralizing. In a matter of seconds, all three of them had their backs pressed against it as the old man advanced on them.
"I rarely leave my tower." He told them. "but when the dual image of the two Twilight Towns faded into one, I knew that this was something that demanded my immediate attention.
Not for the first time, Hayner wished he was the type of guy that could carry a struggle club with him at all times. This old guy was creepy; long beard, big pointy hat, and what appeared to be a dress draped over his body. Freak.
He was right on them, and Olette was trembling. "I'll scream." She said simply, and swallowed hard. She meant it.
The old guy halted, and seemingly, her threat had worked, but he did not leave. His big bushy eyebrows bunched together. "I do not often deal with children, and women even less so. But you misunderstand my intentions. I merely wish to know about the boy in the picture."
Hayner stepped between his friends and the old dude, and behind him, Pence wrapped a comforting arm around Olette. Both glared at the stranger, while Olette was still irrationally afraid. Pence felt behind him with his other arm. The barrier seemed to have faded.
"What is it to you? You're not from around here." Hayner was stalling. Hell if he'd tell this guy anything about Roxas.
"I want to know because that boy belongs here even less than I do." The man started to say, but just then Pence tapped his foot once, twice, thrice, and all three turned and ran, with no barrier to stop them. Beneath their feet, the ground seemed to shift, and they all had trouble keeping their footing. Pence, dragging Olette behind him, fell once, but was quickly hauled up by the other two. If they had had to go any real distance, this would have been the end of their escape for sure, but seeing as it was a matter of meters to the stairs to the station, they made out okay.
The ghost train was still there when they burst into the station, and all breathed a sigh of relief, for their fears of finding it already gone were unfounded. They burst inside, staring wildly out the windows.
Pence was the first one to realize that they needed to get this thing on it's way, but before he could move to act on that, a splash of color rose out of the floor, and it grew until it touched the ceiling. They were trying the doors, desperate to get out, having realized their mistake, when the color faded, and the old man stood in its place.
The old guy sat down at the front of the cabin, facing back at them. "I came here looking for answers, but it seems I'll have to settle for you three instead." He smiled a scary smile. "It's a small gamble, but worth it. After all, you three were in the picture that Sora showed me."
Hayner confronted him. "How do you know S-" and he promptly fell on his butt when the train lurched and started pulling out of the station.
"All in due time." Their kidnapper said.
All three youths had grown up around trains, so the cabin was nothing special. Outside the windows, however, there was a state of wonder such as they had never seen. It was like the sky was made of paint, like there was no ground at all. They watched as their home grew distant, and the train tracks that were held up by nothing were the only solid object in all eternity.
The train moved quickly along. Eventually the novelty of the void and all its colors wore off, and the three sat side-by-side in the back of the train, facing the old guy who made no attempt to talk to them.
Just as this journey was becoming unbearable, it ended. The train stopped at an island in space, not a mile square and possessing one gigantic tower. The old man stepped off, and they followed meekly.
"My name." he said at last, "is Yen Sid, and this," he seemed to glide over to the structure, "is my home."
Once inside, Mr. Sid and the Twilight Town kids were accosted by three dumpy flying women in single-color uniforms. They scolded Mr. Sid for not telling them that he would be bringing back guests, and then started making offers of tea and crumpets, which were politely refused, despite the late hour and the newly-realized hunger. As the fairies hovered off, nobody was fooled into believing that they wouldn't return with food and drink to gently try and pressure people into eating.
Yen Sid led them up stairs, stairs, and more stairs. When they reached the top of his tower, he sat himself at a huge sturdy wooden desk, and bade them sit down as well.
"So," He said. "Tell me what you know of Roxas of Organization Thirteen."
When no one moved to answer, he prompted them some more. "I know that you know Sora, the Keyblade Master. And I know that you helped him invade Darkness in Zero's fake reality. So it stands to reason that you would know why that reality seems to have disappeared."
"I, uh, I turned it off." Pence stammered.
Yen Sid seemed to have only two modes, mildly pissed and angry. He continued to eye the three children with a glowering stare, and Pence hurried to try and justify his actions.
"It was using too much bandwidth and memory, so I had to find a way to work around it." He stammered. "Turning it off seemed like the best option."
Yen Sid raised one hand, silencing Pence. "I care not about the fate of Ansem the Wise's experiment. But I do need to know what it has been doing to the people of Twilight Town in its maker's absence."
"You're talking about all the fake memories." Said Pence.
Yen Sid fixed him in his gaze, his big bushy grey eyebrows sliding together. "What do you know about the fake memories?" he asked.
"I know that, according to the data taken from our town, much of what we remember never really happened. I also know that the things that we remember did take place in the Fake Twilight Town." Pence said calmly.
"Hmm." Went Yen Sid. "And what else have you gleaned from the memory banks of that machine?"
Pence tilted his head. "What do you mean?"
"I mean what do you know of the Organization?" Yen Sid rose dramatically, and his voice reached a crescendo. "What do you know of the Nobodies? What do you know of Roxas the Thirteenth?"
Hayner looked up at the man quizzically. "I'd say…pretty close to nothing…"
"It's a very strange system. Unlike any I've ever encountered before." Pence justified. "I'm sure there's more useful stuff in there, I just have to find it."
It was difficult to tell if Yen Sid was pleased. The look of contempt never wavered from his face as he strode around his desk to stand before them.
"To truly understand what is going on," he said loftily, "to really possess the knowledge necessary to remedy the situation, you will need to know the whole truth of what transpired here over the last two-and-a-half years."
"You gonna tell us or just stand there posing?" the words slipped from Hayner's lips before he could stop them. He slapped a hand over his mouth as Yen Sid subjected him to very demoralizing laser vision.
"Perhaps I made a mistake in bringing you here. Perhaps I should return you to your homes, and find some other, more responsible persons to aid me in defusing this situation."
Despite her protests at being called irresponsible, and her fear that they may be dismissed without answers, Olette asked, "what do you need us for?"
"I need you to keep an eye on the people of Twilight Town." Yen Sid told her. "You three were the first to bring this problem to attention, you three will have to be the one's to present a plausible explanation to the townspeople."
"Oh."
"As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted," Mr. Sid fixed Hayner in another spiteful glare. "I am prepared to tell you what I know of this in exchange for your cooperation in this endeavor."
None of the three friends made a move, or so much as a peep. Answers were what they had been after all this time. Now if he would just get to the point.
Yen Sid folded his long and bony fingers together, and examined each of them, making sure that they had no more (deliberate, he was sure) interruptions planned. Then, with a breath and a draw, he began.
"I first heard of the Nobodies from a former student of mine, who now rules over the Disney Kingdom. He came to me looking for answers, but I had none for him. In all my years and all my books, we could find no name and no origin for the strange creatures that had shown up in many a world. They were not heartless, they were not golems, they were not anything anyone had ever seen before." Yen Sid paused, and asked them "You do know what a Heartless is, don't you?"
"Beings of darkness and shadow that attack people and steal their hearts" Hayner said.
Satisfied, Yen Sid continued. "This problem was a perplexing one, but it did not come alone. Sometime later I became aware of someone imposing their will on the minds of specific peoples in Twilight Town. The town is important, you see," He once again broke from whatever story he was trying to tell. "because it exists in a sort of gravitational limbo. No other world is so close to the void and the world of darkness, but instead of rotting away or being pulled in, it instead orbits the two, and seems to shine all the brighter. I have spent years studying this phenomenon."
"For quite some time, no one could give us any answers. My investigations into the interlopers in Twilight Town revealed frequent, if irregular, visits. The townspeople somehow mostly forgot about them after they were gone, if they ever noticed them in the first place. One of the few pieces of hard evidence I could find of their presence was the incident that resulted in the police headquarters being burned down." A shared look between all present acknowledged showed that yes, the kids knew that Roxas had been in jail.
"Almost all of our questions were answered when a boy showed up on my doorstep, one sunny day in winter. He came without a gummi-ship, or even on my locomotive, but out of darkness and shadow."
"His Highness the King was absent, seeing how he was still warring with the remaining Heartless and training his new protégé, Riku. I alone took this boy's testimony. It changed the way we look at the heart and how we ourselves are put together."
"Previously, it was believed that, when a person loses their heart to a Heartless, all of what remains behind is what becomes another Heartless. And, since the discovery of Heartless, there has been much argument over the fate and existence of a person's soul. The discovery of Nobodies ended both the misconceptions and the arguments."
"The boy's name was Roxas. And he was a Nobody. Did Sora explain to you what a Nobody is?" Yen Sid asked.
The teens nodded, unsure. Sora had told them that Nobodies were created 'when a person with an especially strong heart is turned into a Heartless.'
"Roxas told me about Nobodies. And I believe that I am the first outsider to have ever heard this tale. He also told me about Organization XIII, and his own role in involvement in the conquest and destruction of many worlds. Roxas was a traitor, you see. He wanted to cause trouble for the Organization, so that they would have bigger problems to deal with than one wayward Nobaby. In turn, I informed the King, and he began a campaign that would eventually destroy that evil order. At the same time, I became aware of another presence in Twilight Town. You see, I always assumed that all the interference in the town came from one, specific source. But now that I had identified the Nobodies and the Organization, I became aware that there must be someone else trying to take advantage of your world's unique properties. Though I didn't know it at the time, this was Ansem the Wise, or Darkness in Zero, or Diz, as he often called himself. He was both target and predator of Roxas, and the main reason that Roxas was trying to draw his comrade's attention away from himself. It was a brilliant ploy, and might have worked had Riku not left the King's side and joined Diz, to battle what he saw as the single greatest obstacle in Sora's path to recovery."
"Sora, at this time, was, of course, in an enchanted sleep to regain his memories. He had had his mind almost completely erased by the Memory Witch Namine, under the Organizations orders, and then placed inside a restoration lotus in which to recover them, and then both Sora and Namine had been stolen away by Diz, whose goal was to empower Sora by destroying Roxas."
The surprise on the Twilight Town gang's faces was evident.
"He was doomed to fail, of course." Yen Sid said, and the relief became the dominant expression on their faces. "But in the meantime, he created a 'fake' Twilight Town, in order to keep him in. For you see, Roxas was a powerful Nobody and a great warrior, and it had taken a lot of luck and sacrifice on Riku's part to subdue him. Both Riku and Diz knew that they may not find themselves so lucky a second time around, and that inevitably, the boy would try to escape. It would only be a matter of time before he would succeed, and they needed all the time they could get in order to restore Sora. The town was built to keep Roxas complacent, understanding that as long as he didn't realize anything was wrong, it would never occur to him to try to leave. Namine, in her love for Sora, also helped, and a great deal was learned on how the human mind remembers things as she revealed her methods to wipe Roxas's mind just as she had Sora's."
"Here is where my knowledge becomes insufficient." Yen Sid informed his audience. "I know that Roxas escaped the confines of Twilight town with no little amount of help from Namine, who, it seems equated his survival with her own, seeing as she herself was also a Nobody. Sora was released by the two, although he didn't actually see them, nor did any of them travel in the same way. Sora left to fight the Heartless once again, and Namine left with Diz and Riku, who later lost her back to the Organization. For as far as I can see, Roxas all but disappeared. His involvement is not mentioned in the defeat of Xeonort, or Xemnas, as he took to be called, and his insane plans to summon Kingdom Hearts, nor can I find any sign of him living anywhere on any known world."
The teens were disappointed. "All this time." Olette said. "and all this effort and we still can't find him."
"Roxas the Thirteenth was a master manipulator and a prodigy of stealth. If he doesn't want to be found, then we will not be the ones to unearth him."
"Did he fight Sora?" Hayner asked firmly.
"I beg your pardon?" Yen Sid said.
"Did he fight Sora? Is there any chance he was destroyed to make Sora more powerful? He was Sora's Nobody, right?"
"What? How do you know about that?"
"It doesn't take a genius to figure out. Sora had that weird transformation, that black crawly thing. And he has one of the strongest hearts around, or he wouldn't have been able to wield that key-weapon of his. It makes sense that, if he became a Heartless, then he would have a Nobody, and not just any Nobody, but a Master Nobody." Hayner had his arms crossed over his chest, and he looked grim. "I may not understand much about all this darkness and dawn, but this much, I can figure out on my own."
Yen Sid looked slightly harassed. "I don't know if the two ever even met, although it is a definite possibility."
"One more question." Hayner said. "Where is Sora, and how do we get there?"
Yen Sid gave a bark of a laugh. "The likes of you could never dream of crossing the paths between the worlds. You don't have the technology or the magic to make the journey, you don't have the knowledge or the training to use them if you did, and you don't have the munny to hire someone else to take you."
"Dammit, old man, if you're not going to help, then stay the hell out of our way." Hayner clenched one fist at him.
"Don't think that you can threaten me, boy." Yen Sid snapped at him. "You should be grateful that I have shared all that I have."
"We're going to find Roxas." Hayner sneered.
"A wasted effort. If Roxas doesn't want to be found, he won't be. If Roxas ever wanted a friend, he'd still stay as far away from this place as possible. And if Roxas is still alive today, which I doubt, he is still a Nobody; even if he does remember his time in Diz's fake reality, there's no telling what he would do to you if you confronted him. Nobodies don't have hearts, they don't have friends, they don't have feelings, and they certainly don't spend any amount of time with normal people unless it is absolutely necessary!"
Instead of flinging out a comeback or accepting defeat, which is what Yen Sid expected the boy to do, Hayner exchanged a look with his friends. They remembered the video of Roxas and Hayner in the rain. They knew that none of what Yen Sid was necessarily true.
Yen Sid saw this exchange and wondered if he had overplayed his hand. What were they thinking?
Olette stood first. "Thank you for all of your help." She said, and bowed politely. Pence and Hayner did like wise. "We will not take up any of your time today." She strode out the door and her guys quickly followed suit.
The fairy women were waiting for them on the first landing down, presenting tea and eatables on plates of gold and silver with inlaid patterns of stars. The teens accepted things to nibble on, but were in a hurry to get back home.
"Nonsense." The one in red told them. "You'll be staying here. It's so late, it's almost early. Come, come, I'll show you to your rooms."
Had they been able to press it, the fairy ladies probable would have tucked them into bed. It was three on three as the kids tried to politely refuse their hostesses, who seemed a little starved for something to mother and dote on. In the end, the door was shut and the kids were able to tuck themselves into sturdy wooden beds in a room on the ground floor. They each swallowed the last of the crumbs from the snacks that they had selected from the plates (which had been left on a table in their room) and pulled off their shoes and settled back. The only reason that any of them got any sleep that night was the fact that they had gotten up at four in the morning and it was now five-thirty A.M.the next day.
Only one more chapter to go. If you have yet to review, now's the time to do it!
