The Traverse Town posse don't know quite what to make of him when he comes to visit, this boy that is supposed to be the galaxy's savior. Their savior. The vessel of all the Kingdom's hopes and the key to their survival, according to the King.
Aerith smiles at him because Aerith smiles at everyone, and the boy doesn't see the way her gaze lingers on his back, wondering. Measuring. She knows it isn't fair to school her face into a pleasant expression and listen to him talk about his adventures while coolly weighing his health, his muscles, his soundness; judging how soon he might recover from an injury and how he can conduct himself in a life threatening battle he's going to fight on their behalf. She knows it isn't right when Leon all but kills him bringing him in the first time (and the second time, and the third time, when every return to Traverse Town equals the boy challenging Leon to Yet Another Rematch that the boy never wins but his ego won't let him give up), but she says nothing. She can't help herself. None of them can. They've been waiting so long for this. They've waited years for this child to be born and grow up and come to them as a savior, and now that he's here they are being faced with the reality that maybe they should have waited a little longer.
The boy calls Aerith ma'am for the longest time. He blushes when she smiles and stumbles over his words in his haste to apologize for things that aren't his fault. She wishes he wouldn't. She doesn't want to send a polite stranger out to die.
Cid growls and chews his cigar even more resentfully than usual. "He don't look much like destiny," is the pilot's terse observation. "But what the hell do we know? If he's it, he's it."
Aerith says he has to be. Like the knight, she trusts the King implicitly and the fact that the boy carries the Keyblade has to prove something, doesn't it?
Yuffie nods emphatically.
"He's something special, my ninja senses can tell." She swats Cid for the face she's knows he's making behind her back. "He's what we've been waiting for. He will be. I'm sure of it."
The boy gets along best with Yuffie, to the surprise of no one. She's closest to his age and closest to his mentality (he would die of mortification before ever admitting this, of course), and they're an oddly suited pair, with her shit eating grin and his complete inability to tell lies with a straight face and both of them blaming the other for whatever mischief they've managed to get into. They're a terror to both Heartless and humans denizens of Traverse Town. Yuffie teases him because Yuffie teases everyone, and the boy doesn't notice that she doesn't pull the kind of pranks on him that she pulls on the others, that her including him in her hellraising amounts to a demented sort of respect from the pathological klepto ninja girl.
Cid has about the same tolerance for the boy that he does for moogles and ninjas. Zero when they're making nuisances of themselves, which to his mind is most of the time. He bitches about the state of their gummi ship and the complete lack of progress he's been noticing in their respective quests and geezus, how the hell were they supposed to put their faith in a kid, a duck, and a dog. He's so antagonistic it's actually easy to ignore him, because it takes only a short time to figure out that this is simply how Cid acts with everyone. The boy steps a little more carefully around Cid than the others, mostly out of fear of the pilot's dangerous wagging cigar, but most of Cid's insults and the complaints go in one ear and right out the other.
Leon, however, is another matter. The boy hasn't forgiven the scarred man for the events of their first meeting and, given his instinctive bristling defensiveness whenever someone brings it up, likely never will. If the fight is mentioned he mumbles a different excuse every time and then falls suspiciously, leashed-explosion silent, and half a second later will have come up with the lamest excuse to revisit Traverse Town.
I'll win this time for sure, he says, running a hand over the Keyblade's length in bloody minded anticipation before smacking it firmly into his gloved palm. I'll get him back. Just you watch.
He never does. It's like a running gag to the King's men and the Traverse Town posse. Leon, after enough wheedling to drive any person to the end of their sanity, will grudgingly agree to some kind of 'sparring match' and then, about two seconds in, knock the boy flat with the gunblade and stride off without a word or a backward glance. The boy pounds the cobblestoned street with his fist. The boy glares at the line of Leon's iron straight back and his flat, uncompromising gaze and seethes with frustration. It's a little bit more complicated than rivalry and ego. It's a test of the Keyblade Master's worthiness, and the boy knows that he fails it in Leon's cold eyes every time they come back to Traverse Town. The boy knows that Leon believes the Keyblade might have been better off in other hands, and can't stand that knowledge.
So he's a little sideways around Leon, some of it being the belligerent male ego trying to challenge a perceived rival and some of it being the child in awe of the fighter he's always dreamed of becoming himself someday and the rest of it being a desire to prove himself to the only one who matters, the fellow fighter. The come-before hero. Nevermind that Leon would be the first to announce that he isn't and never had been any kind of hero. He scowls at the boy's attempts to get his attention, is barely civil in their grudging conversations, openly doubts the boy's capability with the Keyblade, unmercifully pounds the boy into the street in their matches and never seems to feel the slightest amount of guilt about it, and the boy just keeps coming back for more.
"Masochist," Leon mutters as the boy peels himself off the street and stumbles painfully over to shove a laughing Yuffie and endure a potion from the knight. "He doesn't know when to give up."
"He likes you." Aerith's hand lingers on the scarred man's arm, green healing light sinking into a torn muscle. The Keyblade was still a formidable weapon even in untrained hands, and packed quite the punch whenever the boy managed to land a hit.
Leon flinches from the sting of the injury or the observation (or both) and grounds out a terse denial. He misses Aerith rolling her eyes. The mage, strolling over to see the aftermath, does not.
"Settled any burning questions about authenticity yet?" he inquires. Aerith shoots him a Look and Leon winces again at her hand suddenly clenching his wounded arm.
"Of course not," she says, poisonously sweet. "There wasn't any question to begin with, now was there?"
"If you say so, miss Gainsborough."
"I do, Mister Royal Court Wizard."
Leon tactfully withholds his opinion on the subject, knowing Aerith would be the first to jump on him and the mage wouldn't lift a feather to stop the rant, even if he privately agreed with Leon. As Cid said, who could tell what form destiny might take. All they have for a clue is the key and the King's words, and for Aerith and Yuffie that might well be enough. Leon isn't so sure. The others are not soldiers, and while Leon knows the value of faith and ideals and what kind of acts 'destiny' can inspire, his trained eyes look past the Keyblade to a child who smiles too brightly and laughs too easily and gets far too caught up in this rivalry with a stranger which (as Yuffie never fails to maliciously remind him) is starting to scarily resemble puppy love.
Still, he has to grudgingly admit, it's better than no hope at all. And for all the boy's immature tendencies he's certainly no slouch with his weapon.
"Do you think he's the real thing?" Leon questions the mage while the boy is out with Yuffie terrorizing the town/demolishing its Heartless population and Aerith is …somewhere else. Anywhere else. "He's been out in space with you now for …"
"You've fought with him." The mage doesn't want to answer this question, doesn't want to speculate about things that could make or break this fragile beacon of hope they've found by luck or fate or cruel irony. Telling dismal tales about the boy's performance isn't going to help anything. "Can't you warrior types instinctively sense things about each other when you duel, or something?"
"Only if they're the type that expounds their dramatic history during the duel." Leon eyebrows at him. "Can't you magic types sense great destinies?"
"Only if they're wearing the 'great destiny +1' T-shirt." The mage flips his wand, annoyed. "He's a brat, I can tell you that."
"Your partner said you might say that."
"You think my perspective's skewed because I don't get along with kids? I get along fine with kids, as long as they're kept at least a room away. I wouldn't care how old he is if he could do the job."
Leon's expression darkens. "You think he can't."
The mage shrugs. "Who can tell? He's got the blasted key. He's got the key and it obeys him, and he fell out of the sky and in with us awfully conveniently. I'm not an expert on great destinies and the people meant to fulfill them. You should ask Merlin about it, when he returns, I suppose." Pause, a thought striking. "Merlin…is returning, right? Queen Minnie mentioned that the King had been in correspondence with him…"
"He's coming back," Leon assures. "He does this all the time. We're just as anxious for him to return as you are."
"I doubt that." The Traverse Town posse wants to ask Merlin his opinions on the Keyblade and the Keyblade's apparent chosen; the mage wants to ask Merlin where the hell their King was and what was going on with the Heartless and how they ought to handle it and if the infamous enchantress Maleficent was really still alive and active as the rumors said she was and if the mage could possibly borrow a few tomes of magic and for an autograph or five and then, maybe, if he remembered, about a spiky haired brat and his oversized magic key.
Leon pinches the bridge of his nose, a familiar habit when he was stressed or headaching or about to take someone's arm off with his gunblade. "Merlin may not be able to tell us anything, of course. 'Destiny isn't a thing to be predicted and measured' is just the sort of thing he would say."
The unfinished end of that statement was 'just to piss me off.'
"Isn't it annoying how cryptic these magic types can be?" the mage asks blandly.
"We're putting all our trust in that kid."
"He knows."
Leon has the good grace to look a little guilty at that. "If he were older …"
The mage casually fries a Heartless shadow that had been creeping up behind the scarred man. "If he were older, he might be asking these kinds of questions too. Perhaps we're lucky he's the way he is."
The boy of course chose that moment to go streaking over the rooftop above them, squalling like a wet cat and conspicuously not wearing pants. He was chasing after a familiar blur of ninja girl waving something red.
"…or maybe not."
