Chapter 3
Of Time and People
«I'm home!» Lea entered his house, closed the door, and threw himself on the creaky living room couch.
It had been definitely a chaotic day in town, and the boy was ready to bet his frisbees, if the pain in his rear end was a signal of something, before tomorrow his butt would have turned blue.
«Lea, Lea, there's knights in town!» Kairi ran from her room and jumped on the couch next to him.
«Knights? Kai, are you serious?» Lea didn't even need to pretend to be interested.
Ever since Cloud had scored a home run on Braig's head, strange things were happening. In the darkest alleys of the city, monsters had appeared, and the city guards had their hands full with keeping people safe. That very day, Isa had started considering carrying his father's spade around to use it as a makeshift weapon, at least to repel attackers.
Was Zack back home? No, it couldn't be. He was supposed to stay away for the remainder of summer.
«Have you seen Genesis? Angeal?» Lea tried to ask his little sister for details on what had happened.
«No, it was a girl knight.» Kairi's face contorted in trying to memorize her. «A pretty lady with blue hair and a big sword. Oh and there was another. Short and stumpy with the biggest ears ever!» She made two circle-like gestures with her hands on the top of her head. «They destroyed the monsters at the castle. Then Grandma came and took me home.»
«Where's Grandma now? Still at work?» Lea asked her as Kairi snuggled against him. The child nodded.
«Mrs. Fair was here until some time ago. She wouldn't go away, but I told her you'd be back soon.»
Lea bit his lip to repress his disappointment. He was in trouble. He had nothing against Zack's mother keeping an eye on Kairi more often than not – Grandma still worked as a librarian at the castle, and she was their guardian ever since Lea had been in eighth grade. Help was always a blessing…
… but Mrs. Fair would have told Grandma that Kairi had stayed home alone.
«Why are you late?» Kairi asked him, almost reading his thoughts.
Sometimes Lea really felt for his sister. After the absurd accident that had taken away their parents when she had been one year old, Kairi hardly had any memories of them, and had grown up and matured faster than her age of almost five. It wasn't fair she knew the real meaning of "being late" for stuff less trivial than preschool.
«I've met a knight too.» Lea decided to tell his own story with all the imagination he could stick in, even if something in the bottom of his heart kept telling him that probably that tale had some truth within. «A boy just like me.»
«He saved you from the monsters, didn't he?» Kairi sat up.
«Noooo way, I saved him!» Lea booped his sister on her nose. «He was mercilessly assaulted… by sadness!»
Kairi gave him a puzzled look, but Lea didn't stop telling his story.
«Down in the dumps, alone with his sword. Even heroes need a helping hand sometimes.»
«What did you do then, Lea?» Kairi pouted and asked him in an inquisitional voice.
«A kid's gotta do what a kid's gotta do!» Lea gave his sister a smile. «I became his friend.»
Ven's Memoirs – Page 1
*I've read somewhere that even the smallest person can change the course of the future.*
*No one ever told me whether it's for the better, or for the worse.*
*I've learned from Master Eraqus that the world surrounding us is the consequence of our own actions. Maybe it was one of the first things he ever explained as soon as I was awake enough to understand.*
«This is your room, Ventus. It's your responsibility from now on.» The Master made Ventus sit on the bed and gestured at the room surrounding them.
It was bare like only a place that had not been used in years could have been. The walls were empty, the desk and the shelves were coated in dust, and the only thing that could have hinted someone lived in there was the unmade bed in which Ventus had woken up a few hours before.
«This castle has its ways to stay clean, but you will have to make sure your bed is tidy and your stuff isn't all over the place. You'll find clean sheets in the laundry, where you'll have to take your clothes when they get dirty. I'm not telling this all is going to be easy for you, but I want you to get used to this responsibility, so don't be ashamed of asking for help if you need it.» The Master grinned. «Taking care of the worlds always begins from ourselves and our own spaces.»
Ventus forced himself to look up.
«What does it mean?» he asked his new mentor.
«Well, Ventus, you're the new kid here. It means your new classmates and I have to get used to you, just like you have to get used to us.» The Master sat on his bed next to him. «The way Terra and Aqua will behave with you depends on the way you behave with them, and so on. And it will be like this with every person you'll meet in your life.»
Ventus said nothing, and restricted himself to looking at the Master in a questioning way. It wasn't exactly clear.
«Everything in the worlds around us is the consequence of everyone's actions.» The Master put a hand on his shoulder. For a moment, Ventus feared he was being grabbed, or hit, or anything else, but it didn't happen. «People behave in a certain way for a certain reason, that can be another person's behavior, something that just happened, and that something has its own cause as well. Even the most insignificant person, even a crying baby, may drastically change what might happen in the immediate and remote future.»
«What does it mean then?» Ventus found the courage to ask.
«It means that, as much as it's possible, as a Keyblade wielder, I'm asking you to be a cause for order and not for mayhem.» The Master stood up and smiled again at him. «Welcome to the family, Ventus. This was lesson number one.»
*It isn't easy to understand whether what you're doing in that moment is order or mayhem. I thought that following Terra to prevent him from leaving was a way to prevent mayhem from happening – to save my brother in arms… to save the order that our friendship was.*
*I would have never imagined that Vanitas's speech had a purpose – to keep me in my room until it was too late to prevent Terra from leaving.*
*I had been fooled like an infant, and in a certain way, they had used my actions to cause further mayhem.*
*When I understood – when Xehanort used me to provoke Master Eraqus into fury and hostility, to make him raise his own blade against me and Terra – I thought they had just hit rock bottom.*
*Then they started using Shiro.*
«Fine. Then I'll give you a reason to fight.» Vanitas hopped off the bridge and walked towards Ventus. «Come and find me, at the one and only place to spawn the X-blade… the Keyblade Graveyard.»
His gaze without eyes held Ventus's, then a hand covered in leather took something from under the clothes.
Ventus found himself staring at a couple inches of what looked like a tuft of white strings. Vanitas snapped his fingers, turning the strings to ash, and only by the acrid smell Ventus realized it had been hair.
«Then we'll see how long you play the pacifist with your bub in our hands!»
He threw the ash on his face, then he opened a shadow portal to vanish.
Shiro. That was her hair. They had taken Shiro.
How could it be…? How did they end up in that trap, and how did Xehanort manage to make sure she, an innocent, fell into it too?
«I've been an idiot!» Ventus cried out to the air. Vanitas's appearance in his room, what Master Xehanort had told him… what could have belied, at that point, that Terra's very Mark of Mastery exam had not been rigged from the very beginning?
They had taken Shiro.
Ventus would have run off to tell someone, but who? Master Eraqus would not have listened to him, not after what he had told him. Terra had sent him away, and after all he had said and the way he had run off, he did not feel brave enough to go looking for Aqua.
And had he wasted any time to go looking for anyone of them – even Master Yen Sid, who had helped him in Mickey's search – maybe it would have even been too late to save Shiro.
No.
He had to do that, and face the consequences.
The sky was starry on Radiant Garden that night, but in the main square of the city a battle was raging.
A young man, sheltered in an abandoned house, took a sigh and sat with his back against a wall.
Everything is going just as planned, even if he was not sure of how long would it take for the plan to succeed.
«… and after a long walk, Russell told us he found something. He followed the paw prints and found a huge bird. I'm telling you, it was really huge, with tiny little wings, legs as tall as a whole person, a looong neck and eyes as big as saucers!»
His listener stared at him, amazed as if the very Master of Masters was speaking before her.
«Mr. Fredricksen had tried to chase her away with his walking stick, but Kevin the bird swallowed it whole!» The boy continued. «But she didn't like the stick, so she immediately spat it out. But she liked so much Russell's chocolate…»
«Mowe!» The toddler asked him to continue his story.
When the young man had taken Shiro away from the crumbling castle, the little one had done hardly anything but wailing, but after hours passed, with the help of a bottle he had found in the kitchens before leaving, the right song, and the story of when he and his best friend had saved Kevin the momma snipe with the help of a retired balloon salesman and a boy scout, she had calmed down and she was smiling.
«And there were a flying ship, and so many talking dogs, and in the end Mister Fredricksen with our help managed to save the snipe and to fly his home to Paradise Falls.»
The boy looked up to the window that opened on the square. The noise of the battle had ceased, and strangely no one seemed to have noticed the uproar.
«What do you say, sunshine? Can we say bye-bye?»
Shiro looked up in his eyes and «Uh?»ed. She didn't seem to exactly understand what was happening, but considering his age, that was to be expected.
He couldn't stay there for long. He could not take her along.
That toddler's world had been destroyed in little less than a day, and there was only one way not to leave her to her fate.
«Lea! Get up!»
The boy stifled a yawn and cocooned himself even tighter in his sheets, covering his head with his pillow. It was summer. Why did Grandma want him to get up so bad?
«I need your help, son. I need you to come to the castle today.» Grandma repeated, her voice getting closer and closer.
«Uuuuh?» Lea opened his eyes and sat up. Grandma almost had a hand on his bedding, and in the bed near his, Kairi, already dressed up but barefoot, was jumping on the mattress. «Grandma, I told Isa and Cloud we'd meet at McDuck's…» Lea tried to complain.
«There was an emergency in the square last night. Professor Even has phoned this morning… Braig found in the square a young man and a little girl. They need someone to take care of the little one until they find her family.»
Lea rolled his eyes. Wasn't it enough he had had to learn to change girls' diapers at thirteen because Grandma worked at the library? He didn't want to do it again – and for a total stranger! Kairi had been acceptable…
«Why should I do that? Do I look like Mary Poppins by any chance?» Lea made a loud snort.
«No, you do look like the person I can trust the most at the moment.» Grandma stood near the bed and sat next to him. «They found them at sunrise and there aren't many people who get into that castle. Even less are the ones who have family. Do you mind being man enough for this responsibility?»
An hour later, Lea had prepared breakfast for himself and his sister, had dressed up and combed his hair the best he could, and was at the castle gates with Grandma and Kairi, with half his face covered by his keffiyeh and looking down, hoping Lord Ansem's guards not to recognize him and make him cut a sorry figure right in front of his family.
«This is no place for kids, ma'am.»
Last famous words. Dilan, the dark-haired guard, approached Lea with a spear and pointed it on his cloth-covered nose.
«I did tell I would be bringing my grandchildren here, Dilan.» Grandma stood between Lea and the guard. «Lea is here to take care of the little girl you found in the square, and I can't leave Kairi home alone.»
«Family of yours, huh?» Dilan lowered Lea's keffiyeh with a single motion of his hand. «Your trustworthy grandson here tried to trespass several time with a buddy of his. Forgive me if I'm cautious.»
Grandma looked daggers at Lea, but then she turned her glare once more on Dilan.
«Whatever his reasons might have been, now he's with me and you'll have to respond to Even if you throw him out now.»
For a moment, silence filled the gardens. Kairi, still holding onto Lea's hand, gently squeezed his fingers in a gesture that had always meant understanding between the siblings. The boy decided it was time to play along and show the guards the reason he was there, he bent to Kairi's level and picked her up.
«Fine.» It was Aeleus who intervene. «We will talk to Even. The boy's going to wait in the hallways.»
They opened the door, leading Lea, Kairi and Grandma inside.
«Did it go well?» Kairi whispered in Lea's ear. Lea shrugged.
The guards led them in a corridor without windows, until they got to a red door where they stopped them. Lea had already been in that zone of the castle when Zack had taken him there, weeks before that seemed a lifetime, before he and Isa had started to get busted. The guards and Grandma entered the room, leaving Lea and Kairi alone to wait for them.
From somewhere in the castle came the distinct sound of a toddler wailing.
«The girl…» Kairi murmured.
The regular, heavy sound of the steps of an adult man filled the hallway, louder and louder, closer and closer, and from behind a corner a familiar face appeared.
«Lea? What are you doing in here?»
It was neither a castle guard nor a scientist who had recognized him – it was Angeal of the city watch, Zack's mentor.
«Good morning, sir.» Lea straightened himself the best he could while still holding his sister and hinted at a salute.
Angeal approached them with a worried look.
«You should be at home, with what happened yesterday night…»
«We are here because something happened yesterday night.» Lea put Kairi down and looked in Angeal's eyes. «Our grandmother, my sister's and mine, who's the librarian here, says a man and a toddler have been found in the square. Braig found them. I'm here because… I can change diapers.»
«Braig?» Angeal rolled his eyes. «Why does that man always find trouble wherever he sticks his nose?»
«Did he really lose an eye?» Kairi indiscreetly intervened.
«Kairi!» Lea tried to stop her.
«How can someone lose an eye?» The preschooler asked again. «Did it fall from his face?»
Angeal covered his mouth with a hand and emitted a snort.
Lea would have wanted the floor to swallow him.
«Believe me, Kairi, it's for the best we don't tell you.» It was Lea's turn to roll his eyes.
The door was opened, and the guards came out with Grandma and Even.
«… what I'm asking myself is why did you take the time to make me waste mine!» Even was yelling at the guards. «We're given a babysitter for the squirt and you try to throw him out?»
Some minutes later, Angeal was escorting Lea to the castle's guesthouse and knocked on one of the doors.
A boy – about eleven, judging by his stature – with an oversized labcoat and a way too serious face opened the door. Half of his face was covered by a thick steel-blue fringe.
«Ienzo, I have the baby-sitter.» Angeal told the boy. The kid nodded and ran away from the room, without saying a word.
Lea looked around – it definitely looked like a guest room. The little girl everyone was talking about was sitting on a bed moved against a wall, with pillows put under the fitted sheets to prevent her from falling, and was wailing her lungs out. She was wearing a grey kitten onesie that was visibly grimy, tuft of her whitish hair were missing, as if someone had cut them off without caring for how she would have looked without, and her face was streaked by tears.
Lea bit his lip – that wouldn't have been easy. He grinned as wide as he could, gestured Kairi to stand back for a moment, and sat on the floor with his back against the wall.
«Hello there, 'shroom. Nice to meet ya,» he started out speaking slowly. «I am Lea. Got it memorized?»
He reached out for her. She reminded him of Kairi a lot – in the accident days. Even that girl had her same dismayed look, maybe even more for the messy hair and dirty garment. And she even looked the same age Kairi had been when it had happened – a year and a half.
The little one stopped crying and stared in his eyes.
«Hel-loo.» Lea spoke again. Whatever he was going to do, the kid had to be calmed down one way or another.
«I want Dada…» the toddler started whining.
Lea covered his face with a hand. Now, that's a good start.
«Zack, aren't you?»
A figure dressed in black turned around a corner in Thebes's streets and stopped in front of the boy. Zack had never seen him in person, but he knew the man. Captain Sephiroth, the head of the Radiant Garden city guard. What was he doing there?
«Sir?» Zack stood at attention, then quickly looked back.
Hercules and Phil were still busy in the square, Phil yelling and Hercules doing push-ups.
«You've been urgently summoned home.»
Zack would have asked if something had happened, whether his family was okay, but Sephiroth hastily grabbed his arm and everything around them faded to black,
The world came back into focus and Zack found himself in the Radiant Garden main square – the same place in which Cloud had scored a home run on Braig's head.
He immediately noticed something was wrong.
There were grooves in the stone pavement, slabs broken, blackened by fire, and pieces of stone scattered everywhere. A tree had been uprooted, some had burns, and another had been cut down – an almost clean cut.
Despite being in the open air, in the center of the square there was a distinct odor, stagnant and stale, that Zack almost seemed to recognize.
It immediately brought Hades up to his mind.
He turned towards Sephiroth to ask him what had just happened, but the Captain wasn't there.
Zack was alone.
You've been urgently summoned home.
Something had had to happen, but what? Zack was tempted to go and talk to his parents – assuming something hadn't happened to them – or to run to the castle and ask Angeal, when two voices cut through the silence and two boys ran up to him.
«Zack! Zack, it's you, right?»
Cloud was the first to reach him. Taciturn Isa was on his heels.
Neither of the two was empty-handed: Cloud was clutching his baseball bat in his hand and Isa had on his shoulder a heavy-looking gardening spade that luckily was only covered in dirt.
«What happened?» Zack asked them. «Where's Lea?»
The two stayed silent for a moment while Zack looked at them both, then Cloud spoke first.
«We don't know,» he said. «He wasn't where we had scheduled to meet, and we tried to find him at his place but no one's home. Not even his grandma or sister.»
«And no signs of violence.» Isa put the spade down and leaned on it. «There's been a battle last night in the square. We don't exactly know what happened but people say people got hurt, and they were taken to Lord Ansem's castle.»
«We wanted to go and look for Lea…»
«But that's out of the question, Cloud, especially for you if you want to work in the city watch.» Isa reprimanded the younger boy.
«But you and Lea do…»
Zack didn't let him continue.
«I can check on the castle, guys, this argument has no point,» he intervened. «Anything that could have happened, if the city guards have been summoned, can't be something that can be faced with a bat and a spade.»
He did not want to belittle the two boys' efforts, but he didn't want to put them in danger – not now Lea was nowhere to be found.
Cloud gave him a puppy-eyed look for a moment, as if he wanted to somehow convince him without speaking. Zack mentally cursed himself for promising Aerith to help him – the little mule was more than intentioned to be a hero, but he had not understood there was little he could do at his age to make a difference.
Just a moment. Aerith.
«But I do need you two to do me a favor. Get back into the borough and go to Aerith's. Please, make sure she's okay, tell her I'm back and I'm safe and in a single piece.»
«Can do. I know where she lives.» Cloud nodded. «Follow me, Isa.»
He almost took the older boy by the sleeve and sprinted off towards the streets that led to the residential district.
Zack stayed for a moment in the square, trying to find out what had happened by looking at the scene.
He didn't want to tell Isa and Cloud, but he had already seen such a devastation, and he didn't like what he saw.
He had seen how Ventus had literally smashed some stones in the city of Thebes to blow monsters away, and Ventus. Was. A KID. Or at least, he didn't have the physical build of a destroyer.
Zack had also seen the Coliseum and how it had been reduced after Terra and Aqua had won two tournaments on Olympus, and those two, who fought like Ventus but were definitely older and more skilled, had sent sand from the foundations of the stadium up to the bloody nosebleeds!
… or something like that.
Whatever had happened, it had had to be something that involved someone as tough as them… and with their same weapons.
His look stopped on a patch of the square where the stones had been blown away from their placement. The mortar underneath them had crumbled to dust, and there were visible some familiar spiral patterns, traced by what looked like the tip of a shoe.
A young woman, surrounded by a cerulean aura, pirouetting on the arena almost like it was an ice rink, keeping her blade up high and hurling a graceful and deadly magical attack…
Aqua. Aqua had been there.
Zack recognized those footprints, recognized the shoes that had left them.
«Daaaaamn!» he burst out, breaking into a run towards the castle gates. He wasn't worried only about Lea, not anymore – what had happened in the square?
He raced across the garden, almost running into little Ienzo who was examining burns in the lawn, doubtlessly left by some monster – Zack knew them so well he recognized the marks they left –, ran up the staircase skipping every other step, and almost didn't stop in front of Dilan and Aeleus.
«Zack Fair of the city watch!» He panted. «I've been summoned home by Captain Sephiroth!»
The two recognized him almost immediately and had no trouble with letting him inside, and Zack sprinted in the hallways. He didn't know what held him back from screaming Aqua's name… then he hit something and found a little girl, who had just fallen on her backside, in front of him.
What was Kairi doing there?
«Maaan… Kairi, I'm so sorry… I really am… didn't see you!» Zack picked her up and looked up and down in the hallway, ensuring no one had seen his momentous gaffe.
«It's nothing,» the girl replied. Her lip was shaking a little, but she was visibly trying to stay stoic. Zack put her back down.
«What are you doing here?» He crouched to look in her eyes. «Not a place for kids.»
«The two big guys out there said it, too, but then they let me and Lea in anyway.» Kairi rocked back and forth on her feet.
«Is Lea here too?» Zack immediately asked.
Kairi nodded. «They've found a little girl in the square, and they needed someone who could brother.»
From Zack's throat came a noise that sounded like an embarrassing hybrid between a laugh and a sigh of relief. Of all places in which Lea could have ended up… there he was, babysitting at Ansem's castle.
«What happened yesterday night, Kairi?»
«I don't know.» Kairi span a little on the spot, her hands clasped behind her back. Then she walked towards one of the doors and pushed it, revealing Lea trying to calm down a child about one year old, sitting in a makeshift crib with a visible pout on her face.
«Zack! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes!» Lea was visibly pleased by his presence. «Shroom here keeps crying for her parents. She hardly lets herself get touched!»
«And Kairi told me you could brother…» Zack approached him with a smirk, then he turned serious. «Lea, do you happen to know what happened?»
The boy shrugged.
«Wish I knew too. I talked to Angeal as soon as I got here. Now I think about it, I'm not surprised you got here just a couple of hours later… this story stinks like a skunk. Braig found the girl and a man in the center of the square. Angeal came back here minutes ago, and looks like the man's name is Xehanort, but he couldn't tell me anything about Shroom, apart from the fact he was told she was clutching what looked like armor pieces… he didn't see them, by the way.»
«I checked the square.» Zack leaned against a wall. «You said the man was called Xehanort, right? I knew the other fighter's name, probably. And maybe I know a way to prove I'm right.»
«For how you're talking about Terra…» Aqua concealed a laugh with a hand. «I think only Ventus and Shiro would talk about him like that.»
Zack gave her a wide grin and kept doing squats.
«I do know Ventus. Now who's Shiro?»
Aqua pulled a picture from a pocket concealed in her sashes. Zack recognized Ventus, in a green t-shirt and a pair of swim trunks, and a little girl, probably one year old, floating in a rubber ring in what looked like a lake.
Ventus was holding her from behind, to prevent her from floating away with the current.
«Have you met Ven? Do you really know this boy?»
Zack nodded, then pointed at the child.
«I suppose this is Shiro, then.»
«I suppose you're Shiro, then.»
She was identical to the infant in the picture, apart from several locks of hair that seemed to have been cut without caring at all.
«Shiro?» Lea pulled a face. «She was trying to tell me something, but she just can't roll her Rs!»
The toddler pointed at herself.
«Fhe-wo!» she squeaked in an exasperated tone.
«All right, all right!» Lea raised his arms in surrender. «Got it memorized, Shroom.»
Lately, the sky above the islands was often dotted by shooting stars, and Sora and Riku did their best not to miss a single one.
Sometimes Sora tried to push Riku aside, in the attempt to see the stars first so he could make a wish. But after two consecutive nights of shiny tails, Riku almost seemed to have lost enthuxiasm.
«Some old men in town say it's a bad sign,» he said, looking at the sky. «They say that it's the warning…»
«… of a forthcoming disaster or a war.» Sora mumbled without noticing, turning serious without really wanting to.
He took both hands to his mouth. What had just happened?
It wasn't something he had wanted to say!
«Since when you know what fort-coming disgrace means?» Riku raised an eyebrow and glared at him.
«I don't!» Sora felt his cheeks growing warm. He folded his arms behind his head in a gesture that almost seemed instinctive to him. «Why, do you know?»
«It means something's coming here. Something ugly.» The older boy made a few steps forward and picked up some gravel. «Ugly like the sky falling on us!»
When his left fist was full of little stones, Riku put his right hand on the wooden sword he always carried on his belt.
«One day I'll be strong like the heroes.» He gave Sora a smile, showing the pebbles in his hand. «So when stars fall from the sky I'll send them right back where they come from!»
He tossed up the gravel with his hand, then he started beating them back with the sword, one after another, far away from them. One was too far… he wouldn't have reached it in time… Sora drew his own toy sword and dealt the last hit, making even the last pebble bounce far away.
«Remember what the lady said?» Sora stopped next to Riku. «I gotta stay close to you or you're toast!»
Riku stayed still and silent as he looked in Sora's eyes.
Sora put the sword back on his belt and gave him his warmest smile.
«One day they'll tell new stories in town.» He put a hand on his shoulder. «They'll tell about the great powerful heroes who put back the stars up in the sky. Together because they're the best of friends. And they'll say "once upon a time there was a hero, I mean there were two heroes, and their names were Riku and Sora" and we'll be there to listen and all the people will look at us.»
With every word Sora spoke, Riku's face got redder and redder.
«But I don't wanna end up in a story…» he said, hunching his shoulders. «I… just wanna put the stars back on…»
«Well that's what heroes do.» Sora seized Riku's shoulder with the arm with which he was already touching him and squeezed him hard.
Riku caught him with his own arm from under Sora's armpits, and lifted him up in the air for a moment.
«Come on, Sora, you're such a featherweight and you think you're a hero!» Riku chuckled, then he let him go and lifted him up again, with both arms this time, trying to haul his younger friend up on his shoulders. Sora tried to wriggle free by struggling with all his strength, and before they could notice they both ended up lying on the ground.
«We both are featherweights!» Sora, who had landed with his belly right on Riku's back, raised his head and burst into laughter.
«Feather? Me?» Riku shoved Sora away, sat up and raised his arms. «Then now comes the tickle!»