Now armed with knowledge but not much else, Kairi decided they ought to put a dent in the expense account Scrooge McDuck had provided for them and do some shopping for the local specialties, on the theory that a town this close to the Waste would have a good stock of supplies for hunters and shepherds looking to keep their skins whole. She found herself 'little ladied' half to death by the second store, never mind that she had taken down beasts that would've had the pretentious shop clerks wetting themselves in terror. Riku decided it was his turn to play hovering sweetheart, to Sora's chagrin, but they made out very well in either case. The haul was excellent: a collapsible lantern that would burn cool for days at a time on magical fuel, a backpack that you could stuff a sheep in and still lift with one hand, a few extremely practical gifts for people back home, as well as the more mundane adventuring essentials.
It looked like they'd be able to rent rooms in a real bed and breakfast and enjoy real food served on real plates, comforts many of their missions had lacked. It took an hour to find the place, acting on a tip they received from a grandmotherly woman in the café, but the Reba Place Hotel looked very promising if they didn't mind all sharing a room with a sliding screen. The woman who came down to greet them was the spitting image of the one who had directed them there in the first place (little surprise), but the well-worn building looked clean, and a decent meal and a good night's sleep could be had for a reasonable amount. Kairi accepted the key from the boy working the front desk, and Sora and Riku gratefully allowed him to assist them with the precarious stacks of boxes stuffed with the spoils of their shopping spree up the stairs. Sora slipped him more coins than was strictly necessary for his trouble, and he withdrew in excellent spirits, whistling his way down the stairs. The paint inside the room was peeling a little and the blankets were faded, but there were fresh flowers on the nightstand and chocolates on all of the pillows.
Riku deposited his armful of packages on the bed and dusted off his hands. "What is it with girls and shopping?" he said to nobody in particular.
"Aw, come on," Kairi said from the dressing table, as she removed her hat and the pins holding up her hair and shook it out gratefully. "I hardly ever get the chance. And that enchanted pistol was on sale. I thought Leon would like it."
"It's all coming out of the Castle Treasury, Riku, chill," Sora said. He was sitting on the frame of the open window and enjoying the last of the afternoon sun, as well as a paper cone of candied almonds he picked up from a street vendor and guarded jealously all the way to the hotel. "I wish we got to head out this well stocked every time. The trail rations Kairi found really do taste exactly like chocolate ca—" he began, but the remainder of the sentence was drowned out from beneath a panicked scream from the alley. Before either Riku or Kairi could react, what was left of the almonds had gone skittering across the carpet and Sora had dropped onto the kitchen roof below his window, barely allowing time to recover his balance before leaping off the shattered tiles to the street below. The Keyblade was in his hand before he hit the ground.
As always, the pattern continued: Keyblade Masters possessed the strongest of hearts, and the strongest of hearts drew any Heartless that could sense them, as irresistible and as deadly as a candle flame was to a moth. Hardly a day had gone by on any world before the fighting began, and this place was no exception. The Heartless gleamed like an oil slick, warping and poisoning the cheerful orange glow of the sunset that shone down upon it. It was as tall as Sora but barrel-chested, thin-limbed, and eyeless, with a toothless mouth gashed from one side of its head to the other like a frog's. It spun its head around on a boneless neck at the sudden noise of Sora's impact, tasting his tantalizing new scent on the air, and tossed away its first choice of prey when it realized the new presence in the alley was holding a Keyblade. The victim was a young woman in a drab dress—the maid of the hotel, Sora saw, since her keys had been left in the kitchen door and a woven basket of groceries flung aside into the muck of the street. She scrambled away on her hands and knees, and tried to rise to reach the safety of the door, but crumpled again with a whimper when she attempted to stand.
"Hey, you want this?" Sora taunted, and tapped the area over his heart with his thumb. "Come get it." His opponent accepted the invitation immediately and charged him without a sound, blind and ravenous. Sora neatly sidestepped the first clumsy attack, spun about, and brought his blade down hard on the gelatinous neck. The newly headless body spasmed once and then collapsed into a vile puddle of slime as the heart giving it cohesion was freed. It fluttered away from the brief carnage like a crystal butterfly and disappeared to its final rest.
Sora glanced back up at the window. Kairi had only just made it onto the roof, hampered by her heavy skirts and stocking feet on the slick shingles, with Riku hunched over on the windowsill right behind her. "Under control!" he called up at them. "Put on some shoes and meet me in the parlor. She'll probably need a healer." Kairi nodded, and let Riku steady her while she ducked back inside for her shoes and first-aid kit.
Sora turned his attention back to the maid, who was breathing hard, almost sobbing, against the wall by the door. Sora knelt down and put his arm around her shoulders in reassurance. "It's gone. You'll be fine now. Just rest for a minute and try to breathe, and I'll help you get back inside." She did as he asked and relaxed against his chest, and her shallow panting slowed and deepened with audible force of will. Her eyes roved over the gentle, comforting smile and lingered curiously on the Keyblade until Sora banished it with a brief flash of light. Strangely, she recoiled from that minor motion, and glanced over his shoulder, her eyes widening. He turned to follow the source of her renewed panic, but saw only a few soldiers and a policeman converging on the arched mouth of the alley, guns at the ready. "Thank you," she whispered. "I wish…I'm sorry." Her eyes were brimming with an apology Sora didn't understand.
He rose to face the soldiers and tell them the disturbance had been dealt with, but before he could get a word out of his open mouth, he found himself staring into the barrel of a rifle.
"Desertion from His Majesty's army will not be tolerated," its owner said, a burly and mustachioed man whose uniform seemed almost too small for his thick limbs. "You're coming with us."
"I'm not—" Sora protested, stuttering and dumbstruck, his eyes darting from one stern face to another.
"Old enough? Unlikely. I saw how you dispatched that thing. You've seen them before," he lowered his gun a fraction and cocked his head in the direction of the policeman who had rushed in with them. "Officer, if you would? It is Royal decree, no exceptions, no matter what the circumstance. All wizards between the ages of sixteen and forty were to have reported for assignment a month ago."
Sora had no answer to this charge, since it was naturally the first he had ever heard of it. Lying well under pressure had never been one of his skills, whether the situation involved a softball and a broken bedroom window or four armed men and charges of desertion. They had seen the magic of the Keyblade with their own eyes, so there was no denying he was a wizard of a sort. And if he admitted he was not a citizen of Ingary, not a citizen of their world at all, they'd assume he was insane in addition to being a deserter and lock him up even tighter. Reluctantly, not knowing what else to do, Sora raised his empty hands in the air, and the patrolman took hold of them and snapped his wrists behind his back into a pair of handcuffs with a 'snick' of finality. "Sorry about this," the man whispered apologetically, "I saw you did that poor girl a good turn, but the law is the law. I'll see to it that goes on your file."
Under other circumstances, the steel handcuffs would have been as effective in restraining him as looped strips of paper, but the restraints themselves were less of an obstacle to his freedom than the nature of his captors—they were thoroughly human, lawmen just doing their jobs. This looked bad, but nowhere near bad enough for Sora to consider trying to make a break for it. They looked too determined, too good at what they did. If he tried to escape they looked ready to use deadly force stop him, and that would put him face to face with a foe it wasn't a Keyblade Master's place to fight—men. There would be a time and place to explain himself. They'd let him go, once it all turned out it was a mistake. He hoped.
Riku and Kairi hadn't leapt from the window to give him the necessary distraction to break free without bloodshed, and if they hadn't by now they were already downstairs, patiently waiting and out of reach. Helplessly, Sora let himself be led by the soldiers at bayonet-point into the street, but stole a glance backward at the dark window before they ducked him roughly into a waiting car.
-ooo-
"That's it, I'm going to find out what's taking them so long," Riku said. "Go see if you can find that old lady who runs the place." Kairi rose to do so, and set off up the stairs to begin knocking on every door she found. Riku took the back way, toward the empty kitchen, and no one stopped him as he strode through the "No Hotel Guests" sign and pushed open the door to the alley. There, he found an angry maid with dirt on her dress and blood on her face, a harried policeman, and no Sora.
"I don't need your help!" she snapped at the officer. "Leave us alone!" She was leaning heavily against the wall as if she could barely stand, but refused the pleading look and helping hands the policeman offered her.
"Miss…I'm not…" he said, looking uncomfortable until he noticed Riku. "Oh…would you look after her, please? She won't…ahem."
"I can, officer," Riku said, and slipped one hand under her trembling elbow and the other on the small of her back. Sora still hadn't appeared. He didn't like were this was going. The Heartless was dead and gone and Sora was often highly distractible, but he wouldn't just walk off and leave an injured girl in the street.
The maid groaned softly. "Please help me inside," she said, and glanced surreptitiously back at the policeman. "Now. My…brother Jonas is likely frantic." Riku bit back the question of where the hell Sora had disappeared to, picking up on the maid's frantic hint. The policeman made a series of relieved noises and backed away, leaving them alone. Riku lifted her up with ease, since she was a rather thin girl, and carried her back the way he had come.
The proprietor still hadn't been found, but the bellhop was pacing the parlor in a froth. He had the same narrow face and dark hair as the girl in Riku's arms—they were brother and sister. Riku laid her down on the sofa, nearly cracking her head against the wooden armrest when her brother elbowed his way to her side. "Anne? Anne! You lip's bleeding! It was one of the soldiers, wasn't it?" he said ferociously. "Point him out to me and I'll kick his ass so hard he'll find himself all the way in County Pembridge!"
"It wasn't a soldier," Kairi said impatiently. "I saw the whole thing. Now if you'd kindly move, I could take a look at her. I know some healing magic." She placed her hands on her hips and squared her jaw. Jonas waffled a bit, but moved down to hover anxiously over by her feet. He made indignant noises at Kairi when she hiked up Anne's skirts to the knee to examine her leg, until she told him in no unclear terms to shut it or she'd have Riku throw him out. Riku cut a very imposing figure when he wanted to. He cross his well-muscled arms over his chest and glared at Jonas until he finally admitted defeat and slouched over to a nearby chair.
Kairi had had much practice with field medicine, and while she was not quite Aerith's equal yet, Anne's injuries were mild, considering the situation—nothing worse than a badly sprained ankle and a few cuts and bruises. She informed Jonas of as much, who relaxed visibly. Kairi patched her up with some clean gauze and a brief spell and moved back to let her modestly rearrange her skirts. Although she was nearly healed and the pain had doubtless faded, she still looked miserable, guiltily flicking her eyes away from Kairi and Riku as if she was afraid to meet their gaze.
"Riku…why didn't Sora come back with you?" Kairi asked finally.
"He was gone by the time I got out there. And she didn't say," Riku said pointedly.
"I couldn't, not with the cop hanging around," Anne answered defensively. "If he knew you were traveling together he woulda come after you too. There were soldiers a bit down the street, see, and they came running when they heard me scream. One of them saw your friend magic away that funny looking sword. He got arrested on the spot. They wouldn't let him get a word in."
"Arrested? Why? On what charge?" Riku exclaimed.
Jonas looked at him with a slack jaw and wide eyes, as if he'd just announced two plus two was five. "Why? Why? You two didn't sound like it, but you must be real country bumpkins. The wizard recruitment order's been standing for four months at least. Takes real effort not to have heard that."
"Well we're not from around here," Kairi countered. "We really didn't know. Can you help us out a little, at least? Where's the nearest police station?"
"Police station? No…no, no no." Jonas replied, his answer steeped in pity for their naivéte. "They were military men. They won't be taking him to the station, at least not for long. I'm sorry, miss, but to be plain I doubt they'll give a rat's hairy ass where you all are from."
"Where, then?" Riku asked impatiently. "I'm not letting some government thugs kidnap him for giggles."
"They'll hustle him off to the fort at Porthaven, I expect," Jonas said. "They took our cousin's fiancé a month ago, plucked him right out of his divination shop. She hasn't seen or heard anything from him since. Not letters or tokens or nothing." His eyes were smoldering with resentment. "The King sends wizards to war and they don't come back. Not ever. Your want my advice, miss? You and your friend ought to disappear. Grab what you can carry and get out of town before the secret police, or worse the Crown's Black Servants, come sniffing about for you. It's not that I don't appreciate what you did for Anne, but…with Da gone it's hard enough, and we can't afford to get on their bad side. If someone or something comes asking I have to tell them what I know."
Riku's face darkened, but Kairi held up a calming hand to silence him. "We understand."
"At least give 'em their money back," Anne reminded him, massaging her ankle.
"Course. Just a second. I can get you a train schedule too, it's the fastest way to Porthaven if you want to try to catch up with your friend," he said, and disappeared behind the desk. He reappeared after a jingling of keys and the sound of a small but heavy door closing, and thrust a battered rail map and a handful of bills at Riku. It was clearly more than he had handed over in the first place to pay for the room, but he accepted the gesture of gratitude and pocketed it with a nod of thanks. Riku and Kairi jogged back up stairs to jam as many of their new purchases as they could fit into their packs. Jonas directed them out the kitchen door and wished them good luck with sincerity but not much conviction that it would hold.
-ooo-
Riku slammed the door of the train station closed so hard it rattled the glass, and made Kairi start from the backpack against which she'd been resting her head on the bench outside. "We missed the last train to Porthaven by ten minutes," Riku snarled. "Ten minutes. Next one's not coming until the day after tomorrow at noon."
"Are you sure we can't take the ship all the way?" she.
Riku slumped down on the bench beside her and let his head fall back against the wall, so he could see the first of the evening's stars through the gap between the roofs. The gummi ship was up there too, orbiting the planet silently, invisibly…and uselessly. "I told you before, it's too risky. They've got airships and radios, and they're at war, remember? Once we passed through the mountains and get back into a more heavily populated area, it's ten to one they'd try to shoot us down. The best I can get is close, and we'll have to hitch a ride on the ground to get all the way there."
"Not even if we were quick?" she insisted. "Who knows how long trying to hitchhike will take? And you're a good pilot, Riku,"
"Yeah," he agreed halfheartedly. "Maybe against Heartless, when we're out in the Inbetween. But Heartless are stupid—they don't strategize or think, and gummi ships maneuver like retarded cows in atmosphere. I don't want to find out what kind of firepower their engineers packed onto those airships by having it fired at me, not when we'd be at such a disadvantage to begin with."
"Fine. You're right," she conceded, throwing up her hands. He was the expert in this, not she, and if he didn't feel they had a sporting chance of getting through alive it was not a false modesty. They would have had to make it through with stealth and cunning if they made it through at all—blasting through the lines with guns blazing was not an option. There were real people crewing those ships. There presence was an inconvenience, but not one the dozens of nameless airmen deserved to die for.
This particular obstacle was not one they'd ever expected. Most of the worlds they'd visited hadn't evolved past sailing ships or magic carpets as the most advanced methods of transportation, and the ones that did, like Twilight Town, were happen enough to see a gummi ship appear in their skies. It was strange, but so far the Heartless had caused them less trouble than the people they were ostensibly trying to protect. Rifles and royal orders were not their usual welcome. The odd man or woman with villainy on their minds occasionally made nuisances of themselves, but never an organized group. It had never been an army.