The Tale of the Lost
PandaShadow
Twilight Town
A/N: Alas, I am still on a roll. I wonder how long I can keep writing these before my creative juices are all used up. Maybe I can get to chapter ten. My mother wants to kill me for not spending more time with her before I go back to college (though I am back at college at the point that you are reading this), but when my brain wants to write, it wants to write.
So that is what I am doing.
This is where things are going to start to get very different from my original version, though some of my favorite scenes and lines will certainly be kept. However, the changes are large, and I honestly don't even know what they all are yet. But I am excited about this chapter. I didn't really like this section in my old one, and now I get to fix it.
The tone of this story is pretty light for a while, with minimal action but some plot development, as well as character development. It does, however, get a bit darker later on. But for now, it almost annoys me how light it is. I hope no one else minds. O.O
Disclaimer: I do not own Kingdom Hearts. I am making no profit from writing this story. I do, however, own Meera and my plot. Please don't steal them. I would be very affronted.
Enjoy!
After having orderly gotten off the gummi ship, Sora decided it would be a good idea to go to Hayner, Pence, and Olette's hang out to ask them if they had been having any abnormal problems with Nobodies, as Mickey had suggested he should do. Walking through Twilight Town with three other teenagers in tow somehow made the teen feel more conspicuous than he ever had with Donald and Goofy travelling with him.
They arrived at the hang out and brushed the curtain aside, knocking on the wall to signal their entrance, and were happy to find the three teenagers exactly where Sora predicted they would be.
"Hi guys," Sora greeted sheepishly, scratching the back of his head "How've you been?"
The three looked up from where they were seated and bolted off of their couch and chairs, Olette jumping onto Sora with a hug. "Sora!" they yelled as the brunette hugged him.
"And Kairi, too," Olette added, pulling away from Sora. "It's great to see you again," she continued. "Who are your friends?"
Sora beamed as he said, "Well, the tall, sulking guy is Riku, the friend I was looking for last time I was here, and the short, sulking girl is our new friend Meera." Said two sulking teens, the three inhabitants of Twilight Town noticed, looked anywhere but at each other and had placed themselves on the outsides of Sora and Kairi, who were in the middle of the group.
"It's nice to meet you!" Olette greeted them, attempting to overlook their discomfort. Riku, especially, felt uncomfortable since he sort of knew the trio, but they had never met him. He had no future plans to tell them about that either.
"I'm glad you could find your friend, Sora," Hayner commented, opening his mouth to say something else when someone knocked on the wall, similar to how Sora had earlier, and swished open the curtain.
"Hey guys, did- Meera?" a familiar voice interrupted himself. The girl in question and her friends turned around, each one recognizing that voice from a different part of their life. "Oh, and Sora and the gang too. Do you come here often?" he jokingly asked the group.
"Axel?" Sora asked the red-haired male in front of him. It certainly looked like Axel, the same spiky hair and marks on his face, though he was dressed in normal clothes instead of his old Organization XIII cloak. Kairi blinked a few times in surprise, Riku managed to keep his face mostly blank, and Meera's eyes began watering as she sniffed and tried her hardest to hold back tears.
"It's Lea, actually," he responded, scratching his head. "Not totally sure how it happened, but I just woke up here one day a little while back."
"He told me you were dead," Meera whispered, though it was loud enough for everyone to hear. All seven pairs of eyes were on her as she tried to hold back her tears, much to the confusion of Sora, Kairi, and Riku.
"You know him too?" Kairi asked, her brow furrowed in curiosity. Meera took that moment to remember that there were other people in the room and her head snapped in Kairi's direction. She too looked confused before an expression of understanding crossed her face.
"That's right, the three of you would know him," she commented, almost to herself. "You did travel all over the universe. It would only make sense."
"I met Meera when she-"
"Axel!" the red-haired girl interrupted, her grey eyes widening. Lea's bright green eyes focused on her, taking in her panicked expression before his face was wiped blank again.
"I told you, it's Lea now," he responded, smirking. His attention was solely focused on Meera as he moved forward, grabbed her arm, and gently pulled her in the direction of the gray curtain separating the hangout from the outside world. Meera was still too shocked to fight him, whether or not she had wanted to go with him.
"But Axel-" Sora began.
Axel raised his left hand and called back over his shoulder, "It's Lea! Get it memorized already!"
"Are you okay with this?" Lea asked, sitting down at a table in a coffee shop after about five minutes of evading Meera's questions about how he was alive and why he dragged her away from her new friends.
"Okay with what?" the girl innocently responded, plopping down into the chair across from his. "And you know I don't like coffee."
"Then get tea. Or don't get anything," he suggested dryly. "That isn't why I brought you here. Have you even told them?"
Meera looked out the window on her right, observing the people here and there walking along the street on their daily business: buying groceries, hanging out with friends, making their way to or from work. It wasn't that she didn't know why Axel - or Lea, as he said - dragged her away from Sora, Kairi, and Riku. It was obvious to anyone who had the slightest inkling of how her situation was currently presented.
"It doesn't matter," she responded, refusing to turn her eyes back towards her friend's face. "They aren't the same person. I'm not completely sure I understand how it happened, but the worst Riku can do right now is accidentally remind me of some painful memory I want to get rid of."
Lea sighed and leaned back in his chair. "You understand that, on the path the four of you are on, they are going to find out eventually, right?"
"I'm sure they will," Meera agreed. "And that is precisely why I don't want to tell them. I'm not ready to talk about it, and I honestly don't think they are ready to hear it."
"But don't you think they would prefer to hear it from you first?" the male commented, shifting his chair again to lean forward instead of back. "What if hefinds them when you aren't around and makes them think... well, he could manipulate them into thinking that it was always how things were in the beginning."
Meera still didn't emotionally respond. Her attention was focused on an ebony crow, like those she kept seeing lately, perched on a railing near the window. Conveniently for her, a waitress had never come to the table to take any orders, so she was able to easily stand and make her way out of the shop. Something drew her to that bird in an even stronger way than her fascination with them back in Radiant Garden.
Lea swore under his breath and followed after her, assuming he had upset her by bringing up something she probably regretted, but he stopped short when he almost tripped over the red-head. She was crouched on the ground, scrutinizing a parcel that sat below a black crow. Lea was getting sick of these crows everywhere. Ever since he had woken up in Twilight Town, he saw at least three crows - or the same crow but three times - every single day.
"You really shouldn't touch that," he suggested, crouching down beside her.
"I need to take it," she asserted, clearly not even having heard the ending portion of Lea's explanation back inside the coffee shop. She reached her hand forward to the parcel but stopped about an inch away. Her eyes darted back up to the bird. It was staring at her. Something in its beady eyes was telling her to take it. It was compelling her to reach her hand forward that extra inch, grasp the parcel with her fingers, and keep its contents with her at all times.
And that is exactly what she did.
Before Lea could even attempt to stop her, the parcel was in her hands, though she made no move to open it. She simply slipped it into one of the pockets of her shorts.
"You've gotten more reckless," Lea pointed out, rising to his feet. "The old you would have thought a decision like that through for quite a bit longer." Meera also stood up, though her action was in response to the female voice calling her name from a bit further down the street.
About five minutes after Lea had pulled Meera from the hangout for who-knows-what reason, and Sora explained that he was trustworthy enough to not hurt their new friend, Hayner and Olette offered up their homes as places for the four visiting teenagers to sleep. Pence's house was smaller, but there was plenty of space with Hayner and Olette so he didn't need to worry about it.
"Aren't you guys worried at all?" Kairi asked before they left the hangout. "I mean, Axel did abduct me. Even if he had his reasons that sort of made sense. The point is that it would be someone else. Or she might run away from him and get hurt."
Sora shrugged as he watched the three teens that lived in Twilight Town gather their belongings. "I trust him, and Meera didn't seem to be struggling. I'm sure he won't let anything happen to her."
"Riku?" Kairi asked, hoping that he would side with her.
"I don't really care what she does with her spare time," he responded. "If she was to hang out with him, who are we to stop her?"
Kairi glared at the two friends and turned on her heel, almost stomping past the curtains. She was going to go and find Meera and make sure everything was okay. If they didn't care what Meera was doing, then they shouldn't care what she did either. It made sense in her head.
She didn't know which way the red-haired pair went, but she tried going to the right. Usually she found what she needed to when she went to the right, so that was exactly how she planned to find them. She saw a few other people walking along the streets, but most of them seemed to be in a rush. Perhaps they were trying to get to work, and were coincidentally all late. No, that wouldn't make sense.
Suddenly, instead of appearing to be rushing, all of the people on the streets around her seemed to be in slow motion. She was still moving at her normal pace, but the limbs of the other inhabitants of the streets were blurring, moving slower and slower until all movement and life around her came to a complete stop.
The burgundy-haired girl tentatively walked up to one frozen woman and scrutinized her face. She poked the woman's arm. No response. She blew on the woman's face. Still no response. "Hello?" she asked. Again, no response. Backing away, she scanned the street again for any sign of life or movement; when she spotted someone a bit further down, she let out a breath she wasn't aware she had even been holding.
"Excuse me," she called out. The person was clearly a woman, though her style of dress was vastly different than that of the average residents of Twilight Town. "Do you know what's going on?" she asked, making her way towards the woman. The closer she got, the more details she could make out. The woman had shoulder-length, curly brown hair with the darkest brown eyes Kairi had ever seen - almost blending in with her pupil. She wore a tapered, aquamarine skirt that wrapped around her hips and trailed in the back with a plain black halter shirt that reached just above her belly button.
And her dark eyes were trained directly onto Kairi.
"Um, excuse me?" Kairi repeated. The woman remained silent, though her eyes softened into a look of confusion.
"You should not be able to see me," the woman said, her voice ringing like church bells, "nor should you be able to move. What is your name?"
"I'm Kairi," the burgundy-haired girl responded, though reluctantly. The woman moved forward.
"Well, Kairi, you should know that only certain people have the ability to see me," she explained. "I am Evelynn, and I protect the many different paths and gateways to my own world. Tell me, do you know a young woman with red hair that goes by the name 'Meera'?"
"I..." Kairi interrupted herself. What if this woman wanted to hurt Meera? It seemed as though she was the one who froze everyone, though it was rather strange that Kairi was immune to that power. "Yes, I do."
"Excellent," Evelynn replied. "Then please, I am running short on time. Would you be willing to pass on a message to her from me?" The burgundy-haired girl nodded. "Tell her that the parcel she picked up is something she should always keep with her, and if she is ever in trouble, all she needs to do is say my name to the object that is inside." With that, the strange woman disappeared in a flash of light, and the people on the streets began moving again, this time at a normal pace.
One man ran straight into Kairi, glaring at her and muttering about how she appeared out of nowhere. Once she managed to compose herself, she continued her search for Meera with renewed vigor. After all, not only was she worried, she also had a message to pass on.
Quickly walking through the streets, she scanned every building and alley in hopes of seeing her friend. It was almost ten minutes later when she spotted the spiky hair that could only belong to Lea beside the short, red-haired girl she was looking for.
"Meera!"
"Maybe we should go after them," Sora attempted again to persuade Riku. Almost immediately after Kairi left in such a rush, the brown-haired teen began to worry. What if there were still Nobodies? Or Heartless? What if Kairi got attacked while she was looking for Meera? What if that Zopyris guy showed up out of nowhere and abducted her?
"Kairi can handle herself," Riku commented, "or did you forget again that she can use a Keyblade with ease?"
"I didn't forget anything," Sora responded defensively. "She just has less experience than we do. Who knows how much things have changed since we've last been here? There could be street thugs!"
"This place is too peaceful for that, Sora," the silver-haired teen responded. "Besides, I spent more time here than you did. I think I would know. Let's just go to Hayner's house already." Hayner, Pence, and Olette had all of their belongings in hand and were staring at the two as though they had sprouted three heads each.
"Well," Sora tried to think of a good reason for them to wait for Kairi and Meera, "we can't just move on without them. They are our friends! Or have you forgotten that?"
"First of all, I wouldn't call Meera a friend," Riku began, "especially since she clearly hates me. I haven't forgotten that Kairi is our friend. A friend would understand that she is capable of defending herself from any unlikely enemy that would show up. But maybe you see her as more than that?" he jibed.
Sora colored. "Even if she would be fine, that's not the only point. What if we learn something important? You don't think that Kairi would want to help us on our quest? I, for one, wouldn't want to be left behind."
"It isn't like she just abandoned us for the rest of our lives," Riku argued. "I imagine she's probably going to find Meera and Lea and then take Meera to Olette's house. Or did you forget that she was here when Olette offered to let the two of them stay there?" Said brunette's eyes darted back and forth between the two males as they continued to disagree. "She isn't stupid."
"But she might worry about us if she doesn't know where we are," Sora tried. "What's the harm in us going to look for her? You know the city better than either of us does. We could help her look for Meera so we can waste less time."
"And that returns me to my original point: It isn't our business what Meera is doing."
Sora remembered something that he thought could convince Riku. "It is my business. I promised Cloud that I wouldn't let anything happen to her. Who knows? This visit could bring up something from her past that could make her want to jump off a bridge! Or a roof."
Riku raised an eyebrow. "What, is she suicidal or something? But fine, if you're so adamant about it," Riku finally conceded. "Though it is interesting that you conveniently forgot about that until Kairi was involved," he joked, turning and making his way through the curtain. The three teens of Twilight Town followed suit, apparently still a bit too intimidated to make comments of their own.
A/N: I had difficulties with this chapter, and my lovely beta ArmadillloHunter was a huge help in the argument between Sora and Riku right there. Some bits and pieces of plot progression are getting introduced. Fun stuff. Thanks for the reviews I've gotten, and I'll have the next chapter up in a week!
C. E. Taylor