Hi, it's me again. Yes, Yumi Hamano is back again. I'll continue where I left off then.
Airplanes, I discovered, were worse than school. Many of the people currently stuck in the airport were convention goers from around the world, and a fair deal of them knew of Kingdom Hearts. Wearing a hoodie helped, but only to a degree. And don't even think about how many times my luggage got stolen... it's not even funny.
So here I was, sandwiched between a morbidly obese man and my scrawny friend, hating my life. After all, noone wants to be the person who sits next to the fat guy. Still, the airline provided internet access, so I spent my long hours on RuneScape. Mae watched me as I move my lvl 58 character through interactions with NPCs and people alike. Cursing one particularly nasty person(named Supernovadie), I hit the wilderness and started racking up kills. One by one, they all fell to my superior strategy... as I relaxed and got rich quick. I soon passed another level mark, becoming a lvl 59.
"Are we there yet? This is getting boring..." came a moan from Mae. I held back a derivative snort and focused instead on the game. But when she poked me, I just had to say something.
"Well maybe if you wish it some magical fairy person'll get us there faster. Face it Mae, we're stuck on here for another hour and twenty minutes," I said using a fair deal of sarcasm, and the handy clock on my laptop.
Of course, she muttered something under her breath that started with I wish, and suddenly the pilot announced that we were nearing Hawaii and should be transferring planes soon.
At the time I was totally unwilling to accept the fact that an owl appeared outside our window. I thought everything had a perfectly logical explanation. The plane was traveling faster than had been expected, the clock on my laptop was currently an hour off... I had forgotten what time we left the airport because of RuneScape. But I wasn't willing to face that truth of the matter. Because inside I was actually hoping it WAS that owl. It brings a shiver to me to remember my stubbornness. And Mae still insisted that it was all true. This was followed by an argument of just how hot David Bowie was allowed to get at any age. (And an explanation of how I know what really went on but won't admit it's true)
Damn us for being Bowie fans enough to both know what she was talking about. But strange encounters behind, we were now in Hawaii...
AND OFFICIALLY IN THE USA!
Excitement behind me, this is where I met up with my first 'hallucination'. I thought it must have been the heat getting to me, but barn owls do not live in Hawaii. And they certainly don't talk. And they almost definitely don't follow you around. It said something about it's payment for some unknown service, and mentioned wanting to speak with me concerning my lack of proper clothing.
It took until later that day, when I told Mae about it, to realize that I had been immediately recognized as a girl. And then I fainted. When I came too I said that it was most definitely a hallucination, and then our plane arrived in California.
Our arrival at the airport was a happy one, and when I finally got out of there and met up with Alison IN PERSON for the first time, I was just too happy(and freaked out at the owl episode) to be mad. A small scattering of KH fangirls in the crowd squealed like mad when Alison and I hugged and then did a happy dance while laughing.
Mae laughed herself red in the background and then looked up as she saw a face in the crowd. She squinted, then paled before yelling out.
"HEY you over there! The one that looks like David Bowie!" she yelped, trying in vain to hide the slight squeal in her voice. Said person looked over in puzzlement and then saw Alison and I and ran over.
At this point Alison and I had seen him already. Blonde and green-eyed, he seemed nervous as he ran, not nearly as self assured as his appearance might make one think. He wore a strangely shaped pendant around his neck, and it took three looks for me to see that it looked like a sitar, not that half-moon... whatever. Yeah. But it was more the overwhelming green color of his eyes than anything else that made me relax about exactly who this was.
"Hey there Jareth! You're a bit late to join the party... but still, better late than never, eh?" said Alison, but she wasn't being paid attention to. Jareth was busy staring at me.
"You know, you're gorgeous in person, Yumi," he said with a grin. I was busy trying not to let my jaw drop. Of course, we all then experienced a rather strange event. Because we did.
No owls this time. It looked rather like another Jareth had appeared, which on closer note was right. ANOTHER Jareth. As in, the one this one was named after. There was some form of long argument, which may or may not have involved me(I didn't speak) and then Mae broke in by being weird. Something about a Fate. Or Fates. Eh. And that caused him to go storming off. After the whole ordeal, I asked if everyone would like to go somewhere air conditioned and quiet. And we were off to the library.
Alison agreed with the hallucination idea, but seemed rather put off by my explanation of the Hawaiian hallucination.
"Zexion's power is illusion right? So you can stop this?" she pleaded. I snorted at her.
"I'm not Zexion. I'm a girl. I don't have supernatural powers."
"Guys... It wasn't a hallucination. This is real. I'm gonna go see if this library has a copy of the film Labyrinth." said the non-magical Jareth.
"Why the hell would that help it even if it is real?" asked Alison.
"You don't have to bother with it, all is in order. Just a little mishap on the loom is all... kinda hard to differentiate between one Jareth and another when you're just trying to realign one thread... I kinda made it collide with two..." said Mae sheepishly. I didn't know why. But apparently Jareth did.
"You crossed her thread with..." he swore,"That child snatcher's thread? My little sister fell prey to him by wishing herself away! I had to plead for a year to get her back!"
"I know of that... sorta... my mother made that happen. She's sadistic."
Alison and I exchanged looks. It's not every day that your friends go completely bonkers and start talking about unrelated stuff. So we decided to do a little skit for fun. Yeah... I picked up a very large book and started hefting it to see if it was right. She grabbed an armload of what turned out to be pixy stix from her backpack. And suddenly, one meek Goblin King wannabe and one absent-minded Fate were getting pelted with candy and occasionally hit over the head with Webster's Dictionary.
But the meek wannabe wasn't so meek it seemed. I made a point later that squirty water bottles were no longer allowed in these fights... Jareth had uncommonly good aim. I mused at wether he was some sort of fortune teller, as they were said to control the elements. But of course he was just a guy. And of course Mae took her own revenge... I swear I didn't know she had jelly beans.
After the play fight was over, we removed our bruised, wet, and candy covered selves from the library and split up in order to get to our respective showers. The rest of the day was spent plotting another fight, this time with an element of victory. Or it would have, had Mae not confronted me.
"Yumi, why aren't you upset about me misweaving your thread?" she said. I snorted in my usual derisive tone.
"Because it's not real. I'm hallucinating and so are you."
"This isn't a hallucination Yumi."
"Yes, yes it is. Owls don't talk. Jareth the Goblin King doesn't exist. There is no such thing as a Fate."
"Would it kill you to be a little nicer? Why can't you just see the truth for what it is?"
I snorted as my only response.
"There is. And if you don't accept that, then I'm afraid that I'll have to remove all the magic from your life. See if you really like the mundane world."
I wasn't going to say anything, really, but I thought that I really didn't want to lose one of my only friends.
"Wait, Mae... don't. It's still not real, but I want you to continue being my friend..." I said in supplication. Mae stared me down for a while, then sighed and turned away.
"That'll have to be good enough for now... you're a lot worse to talk to than Jareth that's for sure. He understands magic. You two would be a good match, if only to make it easier for everyone to talk to you." she said with a dismissive wave. I growled but didn't answer, instead choosing my best outfit for the party later that day.
The party met at a little restaurant called, ironically, The Café That Never Was. Alison assured us that it was simply named after a forum and was a very good place to chat and get food. And it would have been... were it not for the fact that everyone stared at me as I walked in.
"Lex, close your mouth! Zoe, stop giggling! Good evening, Alison, Jareth... so who are these?" said a tall, willowy, effeminate man, blinking.
"Oh, these two are Yumi and Mae, my friends from Japan. Yumi, Mae, this is Mich."
My first impression of Mich was that he wasn't quite right in the head. He seemed like he knew what was going on, but at the same time he managed to practically kill himself scrambling across the empty restaurant just to stare at me like a scientist studying a prize specimen. My first thought on his appearance was 'Dear lord, his eyes are freaking huge!', quickly followed by 'men shouldn't have hair that long.' He was pulled away by the somewhat muscular Lex (short for Alex I would later learn) after he had stared for a few minutes though.
"Dude. Mich. Stop scaring the poor thing," said Lex, frowning. I immediately liked him. He wasn't irritating. And he didn't use gender specific pronouns.
Zoe, however, was totally different. She looked like me, only a bit less masculine. It was almost like she was some sort of failed attempt at me. Of course, that freaked me out. I didn't know what to think. She did, I'm sure, but she also didn't like to talk.
She was also German. She didn't speak English, which is probably why she was the chef in the Café, because Lex, the waiter, spoke German. I'm getting off track.
After Mich was pulled off he turned into a perfectly normal person again. We all sat down to eat: Zoe had prepared a special dish that smelled wonderful. I actually embarrassed myself by sniffing at the air for a full 3 minutes before I started eating. It wouldn't have been so upsetting if Zoe hadn't said something about it in German to Lex, causing him to burst into laughter. I muttered a curse in Japanese and kept eating while Mae hit me on the head with a rolled up menu.
"Zekushion, bad girl! For that your name isn't Yumi anymore!" she scolded in the same language.
"Wait, Zekushion... where have I heard that before?" pondered Mich. Zoe giggled. And all of a sudden Mae got this look... a look that could make anyone squirm.
"Hmm. Let's play the Yaoi dating game!" she said with glee. I hid under the table, only to be dragged out by Mae.
"Yumi here can be Zexion! And... MICH! You're Vexen! Lex, you're easy... you're Lexaeus! Alison is totally Axel! Jareth... Hmmm... You'll have to be someone from KH2. Demyx! Annnnd... Zoe... is a clone? Who the heck should Zoe be? We can't have two Zexions! Uh... You can be Marluxia if you want... I'll be Larxene, even though I don't look like her." said Mae, against the protests of the people involved.