You know what, I'm actually starting to feel bad for Tom. Which is not good. I don't like Tom; he's a jerk and he cheated against his best friend! (slaps him) Grow up, you sore loser! You're an ego maniac with a hero complex and the drastic need for attention! Jerk.

12: Number XIV, Xilvin, The Howling Storm


"There is nothing in the whole world so painful as feeling that one is not liked." –Sel Shonagon


Tom had managed to shake off the two girls as soon as they dragged him through the doors and slip back into the Overworld Cafeteria to continue sulking. He seemed to be getting very good at that of late.

"Here." A granola bar popped into his line of vision and as he focused on it he found it being held out by Leon Khaos.

"Thanks." He muttered, taking it and tearing it open. He took a small bite but it tasted like sawdust to his guilt-ridden tastebuds.

"You made those two girls over there awfully disappointed." The youngest Khaos brother said.

"Tough." Tom growled, turning his back on Leon, "Leave me alone. Please." He strained the last word through clenched teeth. A few seconds later, Leon's footsteps were heard leaving. Tom pressed his forehead against the window, ignoring the tingling sensation on his skin from the barrier.

I'm sorry… He thought, squeezing his eyes shut as though by doing so he could will his best friend back into existence, I'm so sorry…

A giant commotion erupted from the Underworld Cafeteria; the room dominated by Organization XIII. Tom dropped the granola bar on the table and wove past tables, chairs, and curious people, walked straight through the Danian themed room, and crept carefully up to the partially open door to the Underworld room. Black bustled to and fro and voices were raised in anger or panic.

Then, just for a second, he saw a flash of spiky, red-orange hair.

"KAZ!" He shouted on impulse and the door slammed shut. When he tried the handle, he found it locked. Tom shouted in frustration and kicked the door. No one was letting him know what was happening!

Anger and pain popped inside him like bubbles and he purposefully knocked over several chairs before settling at a table that faced the door. Then he crossed his arms and set his chin in them, glaring.

He'd sit here until he got some answers.

Tom figured he must have fallen asleep sometime during his glaring because the creak of the door opening made him open his eyes. Demyx stuck his head out of the room and made an odd, disgruntled sort of noise when he saw Tom glowering at him.

"Where's Kaz?" The black haired boy hissed, standing up so fast he knocked his chair over.

"He's not—!"

"I saw him! Where is Kaz!?"

"Demyx?" A warm, husky voice said and a figure dressed in the black cloak of the Organization brushed past the Melodious Nocturne.

Tom thought for a moment his heart had stopped beating.

The boy who came through the door was not Khristopher Kalinkas. He was the same height, just as lean, and had same movements but his eyes were a bright hazel, his skin was a couple of shades darker than Kaz's would ever be, and there were violet checkmarks underneath his eyes. His hair was a light orangish-red with a streak of dark red through the long bangs that hung in his face and through the rest of it was spiked and styled like Kaz's, there was a small tuft of a ponytail tied up in a strand of taupe colored ribbon at the back of his head.

"T-Tom…" Demyx made a valiant attempt to swallow his nervous stutter, "This is…Number XIV, Xilvin…the Howling Storm."

"Hi." Xilvin's husky tones masked a voice that sounded almost identical to Kaz but it was flat, like he didn't know how to put in the fake emotions that the rest of the Organization could.

He stretched out a glove covered hand towards Tom.

Tom stared at it, his mind racing and going completely blank all at once.

"He just lost his heart. Lost. His. Heart."

Xilvin's swirling hazel gaze locked with Tom's crystal blue ones.

"You can't always play the hero, Thomas. Sometimes things happen that you can't stop and you need to accept that."

Something was swelling up inside him like a wave on a stormy sea.

"Even though I was being a jerk about it…he stuck by me and he didn't shove it in my face…"

There was an acrid taste on his tongue.

"When a Heartless takes another person's heart, it falls into darkness and becomes another Heartless. We call it "losing your heart.""

He could hear the blood pounding in his ears.

"When someone with an extremely strong will to live gets turned into a Heartless an empty shell is sometimes left behind."

He curled his hands into fists.

"A being with instincts and the needs for survival but no heart. A Nobody."

Anger and hate made his eyes burn hot.

"Tom!"

Xilvin cocked his head in a gesture that could have been confusion had he not had such a blank expression.

"Hey, Tom!"

Heat flushed adrenaline through Tom's frame and he quivered with abhorrence.

"Tom?" Demyx murmured quietly and something snapped.

"NO!" The boy smacked away Xilvin's hand and punched the Nobody in the stomach. Xilvin doubled over with a cry of pain and Tom bolted from the room.

His vision was blurry and he couldn't figure out why.

He stumbled into the Overworld room, gasping for air, chest heaving, wondering why he was having such a hard time breathing when he had hardly run at all. Distorted shapes moved towards him quickly as he fell to the floor. Something wet was on his face and was dripping onto his still clenched fists that were curled over the carpet.

He was shaking.

Someone was crying.

Voices jumbled together, figures smeared together like watercolors, and Tom felt like his whole body was laden down with lead. He felt like the whole world had just collapsed around him.

Something warm suddenly wrapped around him and he pulled away. His throat was burning and he felt choked.

Screaming echoed in his ears.

He half ran, half staggered over to where he knew his bed was. His vision still disoriented by what he did not know, he plunged beneath the solitude of the blankets and pulled them over his head, curling into a little ball with his knees drawn up to his chin. His world rocked, his head spun, his chest hurt terribly, and there was something dampening his pillow.

It was him.

He was the one who was crying and screaming.

But even as he realized this he found he could not stop.

It hurt too much.

"Thomas?" Tobias' voice sounded very far away, "What's the matter? What're you doing making so much noise?"

Tom only screamed louder; hate for the Organization and what they had done fueling his cries.

"Tom! Come out and tell us what they did!? What did they do to you!?" That was Scotty. Or Conner. He didn't care which. They didn't get it. They couldn't possibly understand.

"Come out from under there." A voice he could only assume was Joseph snapped, "Now."

Static was buzzing in Tom's ears as he screwed his eyes shut, still sobbing, and willed them all to go away, "NO!"

"That's enough of this!" Someone grabbed the blankets around him and whipped them back. In the same instant, a hand grabbed his shirt front and dragged him into an upright position. Even through his tear-filled eyes, Tom could see Joseph's livid expression.

"Tell us what happened! Now!" The man snarled.

Tom took a deep shuddering breath, shaking in the Khaos brother's grasp, and screamed as loud as he could, "HE'S NOT KAZ!" Then he collapsed into a crying wreak again.

Joseph released the boy, shocked at the outburst, and backed away slowly. Tobias knelt down, wrapped his arms around the hysterical teenager, and let him sob into his shoulder. He nodded briefly at Leon who nodded back and vanished through the door to confront the Organization. The other Khaos brothers departed, ushering out the staff and teenagers who were watching the spectacle.

"Shhhh, Tom, hush now." Tobias slid out of his coat and put it around Tom's shoulders before putting one arm across the boy's back and gently placing his other on the back of the teen's head and stroking his black hair, "Shhhhhh. Alles wird in ordrung, Thomas. Hush…hush…"

The sun was starting to set by the time Tom finally fell asleep in Tobias' arms, tears still trickling down his cheeks.

Xilvin slid silently into the room where the humans were staying but found only two sleeping forms in the darkness that was almost midnight. He blinked at them slowly, watching them in their slumber. His keen hazel gaze picked out the red puffiness under Tom's eyes caused by the screaming and crying he'd done for the better part of the day.

Axel had said that it was Xilvin's fault that Tom cried.

Xilvin was just coming to grasp exactly what he was and who he had been. He was a Nobody; an emotionless shell without a heart. His Other; the term his fellow Organization members had given to who they had been and would hopefully soon become; had been Kaz Kalinkas and Tom's best friend.

Xilvin knew that Tom hated the Organization but why he hated his best friend's Nobody was anybody's guess. The Nobody smiled at the joke. Oh yes, he was learning. And quickly.

Roxas had found Number XIV in a bad way. The Nobody had Formed directly inside the building in a secluded room that didn't stay that way for very long. The place was a Heartless hot-spot and soon they were flooding in to see what this strange new surge of power had been about. Acting on an instinct that lay dormant within him the moment he had been Formed, Xilvin summoned his weapon and lashed out. The Heartless lashed back. He was lucky that Roxas had shown up. Without the Key of Destiny's help, he might have been overwhelmed.

Tom snorted in his sleep and Xilvin jumped. After a moment of silence, the Nobody relaxed and fell into a chair by the window so he could watch the moon sink.

A throbbing pain in his temple made him double over, digging his fingers into his scalp as he tried to fight off the pain.

Images flashed across his mind's eye…

A huge arena made of stone. It is hot, the air thick and humid. Strange looking monsters roar at him from stands towering above. A small, wicked looking fiend sneers at him from across the way. Terror shoots through him…

Opening his eyes to a white ceiling with buzzing fluorescent lights, a slow beeping matching his heart beat. Disoriented from the drugs and shaking from the adrenaline rush that had put him there in the first place…

The hurt as a boy with black hair and blue eyes tells him that Perim isn't real. Tom says to stop living in a fantasy but it is real! If only he could make him see…

The sickening stench of fish permeating his senses as a gigantic star-shaped monster plucks him from the ground like a flower. Panic. Screaming in fear as the gaping maw that is its mouth looms closer and closer…

The happiness. The relief. The pure ecstasy that comes with winning. Winning and proving that Underworlders are better. Winning…victory…

Xilvin couldn't stop the whimper that escaped his lips. Whatever that was, those memories weren't his. He'd talk to Roxas about it. Tomorrow. Roxas was the only Nobody his own age and all of the other Organization members, save Axel and Demyx, were kind of scary.

Xilvin slumped down in his chair, laying his head on the cold table top to get the headache that was forming in his head to go away.

It was strange; all these things he did not understand or remember and yet fighting and pain came so easily. Why? His thoughts churned in his head, one idea chasing the next around in circles. Yawning, he pulled his hood over his spiky hair and buried his face in his arms. He fell asleep slowly.

And tumbled into dreams of people he'd never met before, places he'd never been…in his dreams he became someone else. Though who it was he could not be sure.

Darkness. You. Us. Heartless.

Heartless?

You. Heartless. Us. Darkness. You. Master.

Me? Master? Of…of what?

What. What. What. Master. You. Heartless.

Master of Heartless…hmm…

Master. Master. You. Hunger.

A name…I don't have a name.

Shadows. Rabid. Aero. Darkside. Soldier.

No…I'm…

Mwahahahahahahahahahahaha! I'm so freaking evil! Oooohhh, yes I am! Guess who, guess who, guess who! (evil maniacal laughter continues) Oh my gosh, we're finally getting to the good stuff! Yes!

Um, by the way, if you think I overdid Tom's reaction to seeing Xilvin don't hesitate to tell me. To me, that's just how a fourteen year old kid would react. His life hasn't been the best thing ever. He gets the chance of a life time—a dream come true vacation—and it blows up in his face, his best friend pretty much gets "killed" right in front of his eyes, and now there's this person-who-looks-like-best-friend-but-is-only-a-part-of-best-friend wandering around. I think I'd scream and cry too.

Anyway, thanks for reading, please leave me a review, and byes!