"Mr. Braig!" Kairi ran over and tackled his legs in a hug, and Lea finally exhaled, only just then realizing he had been holding his breath. Isa, on the other hand, kept a focused, suspicious glare trained on Braig.

"Glad to see you're all still in one piece. It'd be quite the downer if our sweet little angel was sent back home early. Don't you agree?" Braig asked his companion.

Kairi let go of Braig's legs and stared at his companion. She didn't remember seeing him around before. Her grandma always told her that it wasn't polite to stare, but she couldn't help but stare at this man. There was a… strange feeling about him. Not good or bad, just… unique.

The man was staring at Kairi just as intently as she was staring at him. "That girl… There's a certain quality of… 'brightness' to her. It's hard not to notice." he said, finally responding to Braig's inquiry.

"Right?" Braig said, kneeling down and rustling Kairi's hair. Kairi closed her eyes and giggled. "Blinding, you might say. So sweet it makes you feel like she's giving ya cavities."

"…Um!" she lightly grabbed his wrist and looked up at him. "Thank you for saving me –for saving us!" Kairi said, bowing a bit.

Braig smiled and stood back up. "Hey, don't worry about it. You be careful out here. There are some scary rumors going around, you know."

"This isn't about rumors though… We saw that thing with our own eyes," Isa argued.

"Oh, yeah, there have been rumors like that. Do you guys know what they are?" Lea asked.

Braig shrugged and his cocky grin returned to his face. He seemed to be enjoying this, if nothing else. "As if. I'm just as shocked as you. But you should show a bit more gratitude to the person who saved your necks out here, right?"

"Then why—" Isa started, but Braig rolled his eye and turned around.

"As much as I'd love to make time for chit-chat, unlike you and Firebrand over there, we have lives that are currently swamped. Things to do, time to kill. RTC time, Xehanort," Braig said, not waiting for his companion as he started walking.

Xehanort kept staring at Kairi for a few more seconds before finally following Braig.

Kairi let out a breath and looked down, making her bangs obscure her face. Meanwhile, Lea and Isa exchanged a glance, both clearly more suspicious from those events. They both simultaneously looked up at the towering castle, wordlessly promising each other that they'd find out what was going on in there.

"…Well," Lea said, breaking the silence. "At least we finally caught Kairi! Now, are you going to come along quietly or do we have to drag you back, Kai…" Lea noticed that she seemed to just be sulking now. "…ri?"

Kairi didn't respond.

"Are you really going to be this difficult over a broken vase?" Isa asked.

Kairi shook her head, still not looking up at them. Lea knelt down so he was on eye level with her, although he couldn't see her eyes with how her head was lowered. "Look about the vase… I'm sorry, okay? It was my fault. Fair?"

Kairi looked up at him and it finally became apparent that she wasn't speaking because she had been crying. She bit her trembling bottom lip as tears streamed down her face. "I –I'm sorry Lea, I'm sorry Isa!" she choked out.

Lea stumbled back, unsure what to say. "H-hey, it was just a vase, don't get so worked up over it!"

"I'm not mad about the vase," she said, sniffling and trying to calm down.

"Well, you're the 'princess', right? So dry those tears and try to smile, okay?" Lea suggested hopefully.

Kairi frowned. "Mr. Braig always calls me princess, and I like Mr. Braig but…" Kairi took a few breaths so she could stop hiccupping from crying. "I don't want to be a princess, though. I always, always wanted to be a knight, like the woman who saved me. In the stories, it's the knight who gets to go on adventures and save people and have fun. The princess waits and worries and is scared and can't do anything. I don't want that, though. It's... it's no fun to have to wait and worry about your knights. I hate it... Like, what if my Grandma's in trouble? I had to wait, and I don't even know where to look. I'm scared, though, because what if the kidnappers found her and, and she's in trouble and I can't save her? I just want to be able to be there for people I love, but... but I can't, I know it. I'm too weak... I'm not a knight. You guys are knights. When you grow up, you'll go off on adventures and save lots of people and have cool powers, but I'll be a princess. I'll always be in trouble, and I'll always have to worry because someone will be in trouble be-because of me." Kairi sniffled again and tried to the wipe the stream of tears off her face and stop her nose from running so much, but it was all she could do not to break into louder sobs. "It's not fair... Why can't I be there to help...? I just want... to be strong... to protect..."

Lea shifted uncomfortably as he watched the small girl cry. What was he supposed to do? He glanced at Isa, but for once, the boy seemed even more confused than Lea was. Isa wasn't typically an open book, so the fact that Lea could read the uneasiness on his face wasn't helping him feel any better about this. Lea elbowed his friend to get his attention, and Isa quickly snapped out of it and glanced back. Sighing, Isa tried to think of something to say to calm the girl.

"You're not a princess. Princesses wouldn't be so unruly and messy," he said, noting how her nose was starting to run from all the crying.

Unsurprisingly, that didn't assuage Kairi in the slightest.

Isa knew Lea was giving him a disbelieving look at his choice of words, but he wasn't done yet. "Hey." he tried. "If you want to be strong, you can't be crying all the time. Princesses and knights don't cry. Don't you want to be strong like me and Lea?"

Kairi bit her lip and tried to stop her tears as she looked up at the blue-haired boy. She tried to speak, but she felt as though she had a huge lump in her throat, so she settled for a nod.

"Do you see us crying? We had to run around town looking for you all day, but even after that little ordeal we had, we're fine, aren't we?" Nodding pensively, he added, "And you weren't bad yourself there to have managed that long before we could get here."

Kairi sniffled again, but she smiled back, a larger smile. "Really?"

Isa chuckled now. "You've got a long way to go if you plan to ever be able to actually win a fight yourself, though."

"What Isa's trying to say is," Lea said, standing up and pushing Isa slightly when he saw Kairi's pout at the previous remark. "You can't just wait to grow up, and suddenly get the strength you need handed to you. If you have a dream, don't wait. Act. It's one of life's rules. Got it memorized?"

"Don't wait, act, don't wait, act, don't wait, act," Kairi concentrated as she chanted this to memorize it, just as she had done with his name.

"When did you become a philosopher?" Isa quipped jokingly.

"Since when could you talk to girls?" Lea quipped back, making both of them laugh. Kairi didn't really get the joke, but she joined in the laughter, too.

When they stopped laughing and Kairi had stopped crying, she finally said, "Isa, Lea… I'm sorry for being mean and running off to find Grandma. Can we be friends?"

"You'd really be a handful to have as a friend…"

Kairi frowned, and Lea rolled his eyes.

"Wow, Isa, you're such a charmer. This is why I'm your only real friend," Lea quipped.

"Ah, I do have Lea. He's easily more troublesome than you, so maybe it couldn't hurt after all," Isa said, his face as blank as ever.

Lea made a dramatic face, like he was truly wounded by the comment. "Ya see what I gotta put up with, Kairi? You really don't want to have a friend like him."

Kairi giggled. "I want a friend like both of you! You're fun!"

Lea and Isa exchanged a look and smiled. "If that's settled," Isa said. "Then let's return to your house now."

"Right behind you!" Kairi said, holding their hands and smiling as she walked.