Chapter 2 Carinol
Terra and Aqua land in a small clearing in an unfamiliar forest. Together they dismiss their armor and turn their gliders back into keyblades. As they had flown in, they had seen a small farming town to the east and they set off in that direction weaving their way slowly through the trees in the dark. In less than 20 minutes, they break through the trees and emerge on top of a small hill with the quaint town spread out haphazardly below them.
"Do you think the Light is down there?" Terra asks Aqua who shrugs.
"We won't know unless we take a look around," she says and they set off down the hill and enter the town hoping to come across the Light they had been sent to find.
But they couldn't have been more wrong.
The town is as dark as they come. As they walk down the main street of the town dirty faces peek out of alleyways at them with evil grins and quick hands that could take all your money and be gone before you realized a hand had been in your pocket at all. Aqua moves closer to Terra as they make their way past and the faces reluctantly melt back into the shadows.
Men whisper in pairs under the street lamps and in secretive motions money is exchanged for drugs. Their heads shoot up as Aqua and Terra approach and their eyes narrow as if daring the strangers to question them.
Dirty girls with ratty hair stumble around half drunk falling into the arms of whoever passes by giggling. Within seconds they disappear into a nearly house, the door shutting with a bang behind them. "Why don't you come over here and have a real party hottie?" Aqua doesn't realize the robust girl sitting on a porch swing smoking a cigarette is talking to Terra until she says, "Drop the blue twig and come see how a real woman does it." Aqua shoots the girl a death glare and looks at Terra whose jaw is set. His eyes stare down the road, not even glancing in the girl's direction. Her disgusting calls follow them down the street until they are out of earshot.
"This place is awful," Aqua says quietly.
"I know," Terra replies. "Its hard to believe that there is a strong light somewhere around here."
A loud uproar catches their attention and they stop, watching as the doors to a building labeled 'Foxy Ladies' are thrown open and the loud music spills out onto the street. Two men as big as Terra drag a much smaller man out and toss him on the sidewalk. Without a backwards glance, the thugs go back inside shutting the doors cutting off the music. The man on the sidewalk gets to his feet unsteadily and begins to stumble in the other direction of Terra and Aqua muttering to himself just loud enough for them to hear, "Look, don't touch. Look, don't touch. C'mon Marty you know better than that." Aqua and Terra hurry on anxious to get out of this town.
Leaving the town behind them they relax. On the this side of town there is another forest or maybe its the same one they were in before, its too dark to tell. The dirt road they are following continues into the trees and they walk down the middle not knowing where else to go. They walk for an hour barely speaking like they are afraid to break the still silence of the forest. Then, out of nowhere, the heartless come.
Training takes over and in a similar movement Aqua and Terra both summon their keyblades and charge the monsters. Aqua easily takes out two Shadows and a Soldier with a combo move while Terra works on taking a Large Body down. From behind her, a Red Nocturne comes and crashes into Aqua sending red hot pain across her back. She spins around quickly, locking on to the darting foe, and, summoning her magic, she points her keyblade at the heartless and shouts, "Blizzard!" The heartless turns to ice and drops like a stone but it dies before hitting the ground. Terra has gotten rid of the Large Body and hurries over to her looking around for more heartless to jump out of the shadows, but none appear.
"Curaga," he says as reaches Aqua and cool relief flows over her back healing her burns.
"Thanks," she says to Terra rolling her shoulder blades to make sure everything still works right. "Let's keep moving." She takes the lead heading off again down the road now more alert for another attack.
Not long after something catches Terra's eye far ahead on the road. He squints but can't make out what it is. Its too far away and too dark. "Do you see that?" He asks Aqua pointing.
She squints as well and replies, "Yeah there is something white lying on the road."
They walk faster, curious to see what it is. They get closer and Aqua realizes with a gasp that the white that had caught there eye is the jacket of a blond boy who is lying face down in the road. She runs forward and kneels down putting her hand gently on his shoulder. He doesn't respond so she turns him over and gasps again. His white jacket is ripped to shreds and stained with blood. Terra now kneeling on the other side of the boy quickly undoes his jacket pulling it open to reveal that his T-shirt is also torn apart and soaked with half dried blood. With so many tears already in the shirt, Terra easily rips it open so they can see the source of all the blood. The boy's chest is covered in claw marks criss-crossing over one another. Aqua is already pulling out the first aid kit while Terra feels for a pulse on the boy's neck. Its weak but its there.
"Aqua feel how cold he is," Terra says in a worried voice.
Aqua carcasses the boy's pale face, he can't be more than 14. Alarmed she says, "He must have been here for hours!"
Terra takes the first aid kit from Aqua and begins to dress the boy's wounds starting with the ones that are still bleeding. Aqua holds her hands over the blond boy and whispers, "Curaga."
The third time she does this the boy's eyelids flicker. He groans and opens his eyes blearily. His eyes are the brightest blue Aqua has ever seen. She leans down relieved and he looks back at her confused. Then he looks over at Terra who is still bandaging the now half healed cuts. "Hey! Get away! I don't have anything worth stealing," he says weakly, pushing Terra's hands away. Terra grabs his wrists restraining the confused boy. The boy struggles slightly moaning angrily, "Let go of me you bastard. So help me. I'll take your fucking head off."
"Woah, calm down kid. We're trying to help you. You're going to bleed to death if you don't let me bandage these cuts," Terra says.
"What are you talking about?" The boy asks half sitting up and looking down at his chest. "What the- argh!" He cries out in pain, closing his eyes as he falls back to the ground. Aqua strokes his cheek soothingly while casting another curing spell. He relaxes and opens his blue eyes once more. "What did you do?" He asks Aqua suspiciously.
"A curing spell," she replies.
"A spell? Like magic?" He asks in wonder.
"Yep just like magic," she says trying to sound nonchalant while sneaking a peek at how Terra was doing. There were so many cuts and so much blood.
She looks back to see the boy grimacing in pain. "Curaga," she says again and he takes a deep breath.
"Aqua can you give me a hand here?" Terra asks.
"Of course," she says and takes the pads Terra is offering her. She places them over each wound and Terra tapes them down.
This done Terra turns to the boy and says, "We need to wrap your chest to keep the bandages from coming off. Can you sit up?"
The boy nods and uses his hands to prop himself up into a sitting position. He grimaces slightly but doesn't complain. Aqua once again mutters, "Curaga," but the effect is small. The boy looks at her confused. "I'm sorry," she says, "Magic does have its limits." He nods accepting that.
Terra helps him carefully take off his ruined jacket and shirt. "Hold your arms up, kid," Terra instructs. He pulls a rolled up wrap out of the first aid kit and he and Aqua work to wrap the strip around the boy to keep his taped on bandages from falling off. Aqua and Terra sit with the boy between them passing the roll of wrapping back and forth around the boy. He says nothing.
Trying to take his mind off the pain he must be in Aqua asks him, "What's your name?"
His eyes narrowed suspiciously again and he says, "What's your's?"
"I'm Aqua," she says, "and this is Terra."
"'Sup," Terra says focused on what he's doing.
Aqua looks at the boy's face again waiting. After a moment he says, "Tay, you can call me Tay."
Aqua smiles at him and says, "Well I'm glad we found you Tay. Can you tell us what happened?"
He thinks for a moment. "I was walking to Sheplin to find some work when the monsters came. I wasn't on my guard and they were able to knock me down. I was able to fend them off but," he gestures down at his chest, "obviously they were able to do a number on me before I killed them."
They are almost done with the wrap and to keep Tay talking Aqua asks, "What kind of work were you looking for?"
"Hold on. You asked me a question I get to ask you one," he says.
"Alright that's fair enough," Aqua says. "What would you like to know?"
"Why are you helping me?"
Aqua and Terra look at each other confused. "What do you mean why?" Terra asks. "We were walking along and we found you lying here bleeding to death. Isn't that reason enough to help?"
Tay shakes his head. "No. Everyone always has an agenda and there's no such thing as helping for the sake of helping. What do you want? Money? Protection? What?"
"We don't want your money and as for protection I think we're good," Aqua says. "Its our job to help people. We aren't looking for a reward."
They finish bandaging him and Terra searches through his backpack. "Its probably too big but here," He says tossing Tay a shirt. Tay holds it in his hand looking from it to Terra who sighs. "Free of charge. Just put it on."
Tay obeys and slips it over his head. As he pulls his arms through the sleeves, heartless appear all around them. Terra and Aqua jump to their feet and summon their keyblades. Terra hears Tay gasp in shock and says over his shoulder, "Just stay there kid."
Terra charges the nearest Soldier and kills it with one swing, following up with a cut through a Darkball and lands his combo on another . He spins around as the two Darkballs vanish to see that Aqua has dispatched the other heartless except for a Large Body that is lumbering towards him with its protected chest facing him. Terra shouts, "Firaga," and the heartless stumbles but keeps coming. He readies himself lowering into a crouch, but he never gets the chance to swing. The large body disappears and standing in its place is Tay and in his hand a keyblade which he had just swung, killing the heartless.
OK so I'm still kinda of new to this fanfiction scene so this question might sound kind of dumb but what should this story be rated? Right now its T which I think is fine but there is going to be swearing and the fight scenes are going to be much more graphic then the ones in this chapter. "Adult themes" or whatever aren't going to be any worse then the description of Carinol with the prostitutes and drugs. If someone could help me out and let me know if T is the right rating or not I would appreciate it.
Rhyme13kh14Xion13: thanks for being my first review! Glad you liked the first chapter.
Any questions? Any comments? Write a review!