ATUHOR'S NOSE: ... The Doylist reason, of course, being that it didn't occur to the author until just this chapter, either. ("What are you talking about, Sylvi wingedcatgirl?") Eh, you'll see. Anyway, this chapter is on the shorter side. I'm sure I'm going somewhere with this.

... Also, why am I always publishing at like midnight or something? Oh right I have insomnia.

While the four of them were discussing logistics, I stared at the blank Replica some more. On an impulse, I pulled out the Violant inkpot, dipped in my first finger, and traced the equation n = i on the Replica's chest. (My first impulse had been a slightly more standard variable-naming convention, until I suddenly remembered about the Recusant's Sigil and decided to avoid that letter.) Sora raised an eyebrow at this odd action. I shrugged.

Conveniently, it turned out that Naminé could shrink her memory pods at will for easy transport. So bringing the blank Replica to Yen Sid's tower wasn't at all difficult. (And now I knew how she got Sora from Castle Oblivion to Twilight Town way back when, which somehow I hadn't thought to question until just now.)

I offered to teach her how to summon her Keyblade Glider, but she pointed out that the Gummi Ship held five quite easily and in any case it would probably be less effective to teach her in a place where the Organization might kick in the door any moment.

I had to admit the logic was faultless, so the five of us boarded the Gummi Ship. It was at about this point that I finally remembered to check my phone and perhaps unsurprisingly there were like twenty angry messages from Luke yelling at me for suddenly going silent after doing something super reckless. I quickly sent him one back assuring him that I was fine (and apologizing for accidentally not answering earlier) and telling him that we were all heading back to the tower now.

The trip back to the tower was uneventful enough, as Sora's ship was still armed to the teeth and blasted through Gummi Heartless like tissue paper. After we landed, we split off to our own rooms to shower - well, strictly speaking only Kairi had her own room at the moment, but there were enough rooms that we could all take one without a problem.

We, uh, kind of desperately needed showers after engaging in combat all day.

Afterward we cooked a meal together (which was a bit surreal, but nice in its way) and had just sat down to eat when Riku brought up the inevitable topic.

"So, Tempest. What's the deal with... your 'unfair advantage'?"

I shrugged. "I'd honestly love to e- er, make that infodump on the subject, but I still don't barely grasp what's going on with it myself. Actually, I was hoping to look into that while we were here." I considered what sort of books I could get from the library that could possibly show how my world had... prophetic video games, of all things.

"Oh, I just remembered something. Master Yen Sid, you didn't seem at all surprised that I knew stuff I shouldn't. At the time I just accepted it as you being one of the local mysterious wizards, but, thinking about it - were you e- did you know this would happen?"

The old master nodded. "I am not a specialist on the subject, but I had been warned to watch your world. For when it fell to darkness, it would be a sign of great peril to come - and the survivors of your world would necessarily be a great source of knowledge. I never did find time to investigate the reason why this would be - if you wish to know more, you'll need to speak to the one who told me. My apprentice, King Mickey. As it happens, he shall be here tomorrow."

OOOOOOOOOO

After this we didn't have much more to say about that subject so we just discussed random whatever for a while. Aqua seemed to open up a bit more after I admitted that I was in fact in possession of unearned knowledge - that, or she was finally recovering from a decade in the Realm of Darkness. Or both?

She recounted the time when she defended Kairi from Unversed in Radiant Garden, and Kairi mentioned that she probably accidentally acquired Keyblade privileges at this point. Riku brought up the time much later that he lent Kairi his Keyblade, apparently having been of the opinion that that was when Kairi had acquired a Keyblade.

Naminé pointed out that it could well have been the combination of the two - pointing out the obvious parallel to the Keyblade that she had discovered recently. This surprised several people as the fact that Naminé had come into possession of a Keyblade had somehow not come up yet. This occupied the dinner conversation for the rest of the meal.

After everything was cleared away, I noticed (rather belatedly) that Lea had been absent the whole time, and only his Nobody had been present. Thinking about it, this did seem the only way for the two not to meet, but it also felt completely unfair to Lea. I mentioned this (quietly) to Yen Sid and he acknowledged this and said that he had planned to send a broom servant to Lea with food for him but suggested that it might be better for an actual person to do that, so Lea would have a chance to socialize.

So of course I volunteered. Sure, it seemed like Yen Sid was railroading me into it, but it had been my idea to keep his presence secret from Lea's Nobody so really the situation was my doing.

Knock knock. "Room service."

"Eh? Oh, I guess it is that time..."

Lea answered the door with his old Organization hood up (just in case) and I quickly slipped in and locked the door behind me. Lea ate his food while I brought him up to speed on everything, and after that I stuck around a bit so we could just chat.

"... but thinking about it, that means Keyblades can spread about as easily as viruses, can't they?" Lea said.

"Pretty much, yeah. According to Aqua, there was a war long ago, consisting entirely of Keyblade wielders, and the blades they left behind stretch farther than the eye can see."

"Damn. That's heavy."

"Mm-hmm... You know, I still don't have any clue what to do about you and A- your Nobody."

"It's a weird situation. Sora and Ro-"

"Stop!" I interrupted suddenly. "Sorry. I've been feeling watched lately, so can we avoid, er... the letter our enemy's name begins with?"

Lea took a moment to figure out what that meant. "Oh! Okay, yeah, fair enough. But like I was saying, Sora and... Sora's Nobody, running around at the same time was weird enough, and there was a logical e- I mean, a logical reason behind that. It'd be nice if a solution would just drop out of the sky."

I snrk'd. "Unlikely. But I'll keep an eye out." I checked the time - it was getting late. "I should probably be getting to sleep soon."

Lea nodded. "Don't let me keep ya. I know you have bad sleep habits as it is."

I stood up and opened the door to leave, only to spot Lea's Nobody listening at the door. "Uh. Oops?" he said lamely - and then he spotted Lea. "Wait. What?"

Acting on instinct, I grabbed the Nobody by the wrist and yanked him into the room, slamming the door behind us.

The three of us looked back and forth between each other - the Nobody in confusion, Lea and I in panic.

Lea spoke up first. "I take it you didn't have a plan for this scenario?"

"I didn't have a plan for any scenario," I said. "That's sort of how we got into this."

"Why are there two of me?" the Nobody asked.

"I can answer that, actually. Do you remember... the time you died to save Sora?"

"What? I'm not dead, that can't have... can't... but. It did happen. I remember it. What the hell? Why do I remember something that can't possibly have happened?!"

"Calm," I said, accompanied with the obligatory 'calm down' gesture. "When a Nobody dies, their original self tends to come back." I paused. "Wild hypothesis: you might be able to get your heart back right now."

"What, really?" The Nobody walked over to his original. "Are you suggesting I can just," he lightly poked his original in the face and there was a sudden blinding flash of light.

When my eyes recovered, I could only see one firebrand.

"... Huh." he said.

"I, uh... I would have bet millions of munny that that would have required way more effort than that."

The firebrand blinked - and now I'm using an epithet not to avoid writing a Recusant's Sigil, but because I legitimately don't know which person I'm looking at.

"This is kinda trippy," he said. "It was weird enough when I went from being a Somebody to a Nobody and back again, but that only ever involved one of me at a time. Now I have this whole stretch of like a month and a half where I have two simultaneous memories."

"... Well, I can't say this is a phenomenon I'm familiar with, but, intuitively, I suspect it's probably better not to think too hard about it."

A knock at the door. "Lea, Tempest?" It was Sora. "We heard a slam. Everything okay?"

"Yeah... You know how we were wondering about possibly merging Lea and his Nobody back together? That turned out to be so easy we actually did it by accident."

OOOOOOOOOO

Lea, Sora, Kairi, Naminé, and I had gathered to discuss the ramifications of this surprising development.

"So," Lea said, "we're definitely not using my Nobody as a spy in the Organization."

"To be fair, that ship sailed several hours ago," I said. "Geez, has it really only been hours? It feels like it's been months."

"Really, it sailed the moment I snuck out to ask you all about Ro- er, Sora's Nobody." Lea blinked as his brain caught up to how he had phrased that. "Huh. That's weird."

"At least we have an easy way to get rid of the remaining crop of duplicate Nobodies," Sora mused. "Just shove them into their counterparts and foom, problem solved."

"I'm not sure how that'd work with Isa and Braig's Nobodies. I still don't know what precisely it implies that they have yellow 'nort eyes suddenly, but it can't be good for us."

"I've spotted another flaw in the plan," Kairi pointed out. With great dramatic flair, she brandished one finger and poked Naminé's cheek.

Nothing happened.

The two of them sat there like that for a few seconds, until Naminé spoke up. "You done?"

"Yeah, I'm done."

"Point made," I said, "there's clearly more to it than just a Nobody touching their counterpart. Though thinking about it, you two are rather non-central... members of the category 'Nobodies and their counterparts'. It's possible that you're just e- not bound by the rule."

"Tempest," Kairi asked, "why do you keep almost saying something and then-"

(Of course, I already covered this subject with Lea, so I'm going to skip forward a bit.)

"-oh, I get it," she said.

"I don't... think he can track us just by the letters in random words we say," Sora said. "Like, what if we're all deliberately misspelling it in our heads?"

"... Maybe," I admitted. "But I just really don't like the idea that... uh, 'No Heart', is able to spy on us at will. So I'm being ma- er, I'm being as cautious as possible. I'm even avoiding writing that letter in my journal. Though, thinking about it, I'm not sure that'll actually help, considering how many of them I must have written before this occurred to me..."

"I'm almost completely sure," Naminé said, "that ... No Heart has to place the Recusant's Sigil himself if he wants to track it. It doesn't make sense any other way."

"... Probably. But I dunno what kinda loopholes he could be abusing to make things I write count as 'putting the sigil there himself', so just to be sure, I'm gonna go back and scribble out all the ones I already wrote."

[Editors' note: The X's redacted in previous portions of Tempest's journal were restored prior to publication to aid legibility.]

I suddenly yawned, stretching. "Ah, shoot, it is way too late... we were all supposed to be asleep ages ago. Enough for tonight. We can handle anything else in the morning."