A/N: Hey! So. Haven't updated in…well, a long time. Here ya go. Enjoy! (btw-maddi, nice fangirl squeal. Ha!)
"Kae-kae?"
Kaede paused. She was watching a scene from a Rusty-era cherry-blossom festival. A tiny girl with short black pigtails in a blue kimono came running up to her friend.
The tiny six-year-old girl tugged on her friend's pink summer kimono. She turned. The tiny girl smiled expectantly. Her tiny black pigtails blew in an invisible breeze that Kaede couldn't feel.
Kaede immediately recognized the slightly taller girl to be herself, but the other girl only looked familiar. Kaede couldn't see who she was.
"Kae-kae, where's my mommy?" Her eyes filled with tears. Child-Kaede stared down at her.
"Um…" Child-Kaede paused. "I…don't know."
The girl's eyes flooded over, her expression falling. "Mommy?" she whimpered.
Real-Kaede frowned. She reached out to pat the little girl's head (she felt bad for her), but her hand went right through the girl's head. "What?" Kaede gasped, but the scene played on like Real-Kaede wasn't even there.
A tall man came running up. "Are you…?" he asked, grabbing the little girl's arm.
"Hey!" Real-Kaede cried out. But no sound came from her throat.
She turned to stare up at him. "Daddy?"
The man sighed. "No," he said. "I have…bad news. Your mommy and daddy aren't…coming home."
The little girl's eyes widened. "Why?" she whispered.
"It's not your fault…" he said.
"No!" the little girl shouted. "I'll be a good girl! Bring mommy and daddy back, please…"
The man shook his head. "I'm…sorry. I can't." Then he walked away.
Kaede stared after him, wondering what she'd just seen.
000000
Kaede woke up, panting. "What the-?" She paused, doing the yoga breaths her teacher had taught her back in Prettyville.
"Chi-wa, I'm bored." Kaede rolled over in her bed. "Why is this place soooo boring?"
Chiho groaned. But she still played along. "Because, Kae-la, it's three in the morning back home. You're still jet-lagged. Or dimension-travel-lagged. Whatever."
Kaede sighed. "But that's not why things are boring here! Here, it's two AM. Back in Prettyville, I'd be in a party tower with Ruri-wa right now…"
Chiho gripped her blankets in two tiny fists, shaking with suppressed anger. "That," she said through gritted teeth. "Is not my fault. But here, you're bored because you wouldn't go training with us. So you're not tired like the rest of us are, and you have no desire to be asleep because you just sat there and slept the whole day!"
Shockingly, Kaede giggled. "True-true," she hummed. "But what did you do?"
"I stabbed Roxas. Twice." (There, Chiho thought to herself. Maybe that'll get her to shut up.)
Kaede gasped. "Rea-lly?" She giggled. "Too funny!"
From below, Akako kicked Kaede's bed. "Hey! You!"
Kaede peeked over the edge of the bed. "Yes, Akky-chan?"
"Shut it," Akako growled. "Some of us are tired." She kicked the bed on the last word.
"Geez," Kaede said. "It's not like it's late at night or anything."
"You're right," Yuki hissed from her bed. "It's early. Way too early in the morning for you to be talking."
"SO SHUT UP," Ariana howled from her bed above Yuki.
The room fell silent for a few minutes.
"I'm still not tired," Kaede grumbled, but still settled under the covers.
000000
The next morning, Kaede woke to the smell of pseudomeat.
"What-?" She sat up, and immediately hit her head on the rough stone ceiling with a loud SMACK sound. "OW!" She fell back, frowning, before she turned to peek over the edge of her bed.
"Mmmm," a voice mused. "Wonder if there was an echo."
She spotted the small group on the floor. Roxas, Ren, Sora, Akako, Yuki, Chiho, and Ariana were sitting cross-legged on the floor, in a small circle, staring intensely at the small cluster of water purifiers on the ground. Cloud was glancing disinterestedly at her.
"Um, what?" Kaede asked. "What are you guys doing?"
"Breakfast," Ren said, like that explained their little water-purifier-cult thingy.
Chiho, mature as ever, snorted, "Ha! Ren is doing his breakfast."
Michiko snickered and high-fived her. Ren pelted them with random rocks. Everyone else ignored them.
"Okay. But where's Tally and Shay?"
"Hunting. They can't stand this stuff," Ariana waved a thin hand at the small white plastic purifiers.
"Tally lived off SpagBol for soooo long," Yuki agreed, speaking more to the little cult than to Kaede.
Everyone from the city nodded. The SK-residents pretended they understood, but were actually quite blank. (Ren especially-he'd never had much of a brain to think with anyway.)
Suddenly, Shay and Tally burst into the room. "Crap," Tally hissed. She slammed the door behind her. "That won't hold them for long."
Shay grimaced. "You think?"
"Won't hold what for long?" Cloud asked. Kaede blinked in disbelief. It was the longest sentence she'd ever heard him say.
"These funny black buggy thingies," Tally said, sounding more pretty-headed than ever. "They had these big yellow eyes…"
"Heartlesses," they all said, except for Kaede, Shay, and Tally, who had no idea what those were.
"The what?" Shay asked.
"Ant-like little things that are hell-bent on killing us," Chiho supplied.
"What-like?" Tally asked.
"Bugs," Chiho said after a moment. "Little bugs with big antennae and lots of creepy-crawly legs."
Something smashed into the door.
"What rude visitors," Ren grumbled sarcastically. But he pulled out his keyblade and sighed.
"Well, we're about to be really rude hosts," Chiho piped up. She tugged at her bracelet; the charm came off in her hand easily and expanded into an enormous keyblade with a tiny cluster of charms on the end swinging merrily. She smiled enthusiastically, looking more like she was about to go shopping more than she was going to kill something. (A/N: Shopping? With a large keyblade? Only Chiho… -.-)
"That was lame," Kaede grumbled from bed. She slowly got up, realizing she'd been lying under the covers the whole time, and pulled on a pair of white leggings at random. She jumped down and grabbed her staff from the corner, never having figured out how to shrink it. (And Tally wouldn't let them teach her again. "Who knows what else she'll try to shrink?")
"Okay, then why don't you help us out here?" Akako squealed just as the heartless smashed themselves through the door. Michiko screamed.
"OhmiGOD! They're ugly!" Michiko gasped as she slammed her pink snowflake staff into one of them. "Geez. The least they could have done was be cute when they invaded our place, but noooo, they had to be ugly!" She stabbed another one, watching with approval as pink, glittery, perfume-y smelling clouds choked the poor thing from the inside out until it died.
"Um, hello?" Chiho slashed at a small group of Heartlesses that had swarmed her, spinning wildly like an ice skater on drugs. "Do you really think I'd be able to hurt these things if they were cute?"
Michiko squealed in frustration as the Heartlesses drove her into a corner. "Guess not," she squeaked as they slowly formed a mound over her. Soon, they couldn't see Michiko anymore.
"MICHI!" Chiho screamed. But her concern was unnecessary: there was a flash of super-bright white light and the heartlesses exploded, revealing Michiko and her four polar bears, all fully grown. (or expanded, or whatever the term is!) One of them was randomly flashing to pinkish-purple, but other than that it was one of the coolest things they'd ever seen.
"Wheeeeeeee," Michiko sang, slashing at another layer of heartlesses with such force that she spun in a circle. "This is kinda fun!"
But Kaede was backed into a corner, her back pressed against the cold stone and her eyes wide. "Uh…guys?"
Yuki squeaked. "Kaede!"
Tally, who up to that point had just been idly jumping off the heartlesses, from one black head to another, bounded over to Kaede and proceeded to rip apart the heartlesses. "You prettyheads are so incompetent," she grumbled, sounding more bored than angry.
But when the layer of heartlesses had been peeled away, Kaede wasn't there.
A/N: Don't mean to kill the mood but… -cue dramatic music!-
BTW-Bliss: "Did you know you're totally frickin hot?" Niiiiiiice.