The mansion in Twilight Town smelled, Xertheah thought, of dust. She disapproved. Things should smell of lemon-limey freshness and citrus and vanilla and other clean scents. Not of dust. But there was no other place to go, if she was to do what she had planned. She would be needing the information harbored in the supercomputer in the mansion's basement.
Her long robe, an imitation of the Organization's in dark grey, left a swishing path through the dust and dirt on the floor, as the heels of her tall black boots clicked down the stairs to the concealed room. So this was where Roxas's world had been created. She sighed. She had been rather fond of number thirteen. He was a nice kid, once you got to know him. Which, of course, had been the problem all along. The reason he had left, the reason she had never been allowed in at all. They were just too nice. Xertheah shook her head. That was beside the point. She was here now, about to do this, and that was the important thing.
After a minute spent puzzling over the controls, the blonde Nobody managed to pull up video footage of Sora in Twilight Town. She settled down in the room's only chair and watched as he roamed the town, met up with Roxas's friends from the imaginary world, caught the train to Yen Sid's. The kid was good, she'd give him that much, after seeing him obliterate Heartless left and right. And she did have a bit of a thing for spiky haired guys. "Yes," she murmured, "you'll be the first."
The Princesses were safe, which is to say, untouchable. The Heartless and lesser Nobodies had all been killed or left too weak to present any sort of threat, much less gather enough hearts to unlock Kingdom Hearts. And yet, that was the only way Xertheah could think to prove that she was good enough. And, perhaps, a chance to bring back the man she had loved.
After two years of searching through the library of the Castle That Never Was, she came across a footnote. It offhandedly mentioned someone, someones, called the Princes, in much the same context as the rest of the book talked of the Princesses of the Heart. All it said was that they too were seven in number, and she, the reader, would know them by the strange weapons they bore. Strange weapons… A giant key was pretty strange, wasn't it? So Xertheah had joined to Twilight Town in hopes of learning more. Now all she needed was a way to find the fabled Keyblade Master, or, better yet, contact him, draw him to her.
Ashleigh came to lying on the floor of a place she had never seen before. It certainly wasn't Wonderland, though. She wasn't so sure what she thought of that. New places were always fun, but what if she didn't make it home in time? Time for what, she didn't know, but surely there was something she needed to do back there, right? This, however, she brushed aside for the moment. Now was the time to figure out where 'here' was, not worry about why it wasn't where she remembered being last.
A quick glance around the room she was in confirmed that it was entirely white. Pictures that appeared to have been done drawn a gifted, but young, child decorated the walls. Ashleigh picked herself up and walked around the room, examining each sketch in turn. Most of them were of the same person, a boy with crazy brown hair and a giant key.
"Hmmm… I wonder what it's a key to." the girl who, for today, called herself Ashleigh mused.
But there were also pictures of other people. A tall boy with long silver hair, which somehow failed to make him seem in anyway feminine. A pale girl with red hair and a cute smile. "Wait. Is that a duck?" It was. Wearing a shirt, and holding a staff. Along with a dog, walking upright. In some of them, a breezy island was depicted, with clear water and shady palm trees.
All of these were grouped together. But there were more pictures off to one side. These showed a pale blonde girl, smiling shyly at a boy who looked almost, but not quite, like the one with the key, or an older, but still not old, redhead grinning in confidence at the same boy. In the latter picture they both wore heavy black robes that Ashleigh thought she recognized, although she had no idea where from.
When she realized she had made it all the way around the room, she turned on her heel and headed for the only door. Maybe there was more interesting stuff to be found.
Nakita was angry. In fact, she was furious. Livid, even. What were these, these things, these five digit appendages in place of her beautiful strong paws? And the limbs they were attached to were not made for walking at all. She had only one pair of legs, and these long and fragile compared to her powerful feline ones. What had happened to her? Where was she? She prowled around the small room, looking for a way out. There was a large square space on one side through which she could see open skies, but it was blocked by a clear substance between a lattice of thin wooden beams.
"Dammit!"
She turned around only to find what was, by all appearances, a large slab of wood. Nakita batted at the round metal ball protruding from said slab in frustration. There was a loud click and the door swung open. Nakita gave a low growl somewhere between satisfaction and irritation before making her way out of the room.