takes place right after In Thei-his Memory and in the beginning of Let the storm rage.
ever since he found that old journal, Marku has truly put into heart to be his own person. It has been interesting watching him get in contact with the local and allowed them to help him get the hang of a new weapon. He has gotten so determent to not being Riku that he refuses to wield a blade like Soul Eater. He dragged me outside the mansion to his next training session, I was a bit hesitant but I am glad he persuaded me. It's nice being around people who doesn't know your past nor abilities. I have fun drawing Marku training with Seifer, it's relaxing drawing something that happens right before my eyes instead of from in the memories around me.
But... I still have a task, especially when these memories might help us against Xehanort. I just hope Sora, Riku and Kairi can save this weaken world from its sickness before it is too late.
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To whoever who came to this certain world would not be impressed by its looks, most of the world were barren and destroyed. Visitors who knew to Radiant Garden could mistake this world as that world's former name: Hollow Bastion thanks to the much destruction this world has been through a very short time.
However, not everything was in ruins in this barren world. Between the ruins of a once beautiful area of the city stood a church, inside this mostly intact church were a bed of colorful flowers. Humming beside the flowers was a little girl, she had made it her task watering the flowers and in turn made this church a pretty place to visit. Especially for one person who often came here to find a little solace in his usual dark life.
Standing nearby stood Tifa, someone who has aided Sora and friends a few times in the past when she searched for Cloud in Radiant Garden. She found him in this world- their homeworld and aided him to defeat a dark-hearted man named Sephiroth. Sadly that had only been part of the battle, the second part was still being fought, this world's residents, mostly the children were suffering from a disease many called the stigma and caused the affected tremendous of pain and slowly weaken them to in the end let them get swallowed by the Heartless.
Cloud was often out there, searching for a cure but so far had no luck.
Suddenly, out from nowhere, a purple bullet landed right beside Tifa's feet, snapping her out from her thoughts and looked upward to the broken ceiling. On the once second floor of the church sat an elderly man with an eye patch over the right eye and a long scar on the left cheek. This man wore a black cloak that told her that this person wasn't one of the good guys so she told the girl Marlene to seek cover.
The one-eyed man smirked down at her. "For someone who isn't known to be subtle when fighting, you sure were difficult to find."
"What do you want?" Tifa asked him in a hard tone.
The man's smirk grew a little wider as he nodded towards the spot where Marlene hid. Tifa gasped shocked at this and for a moment almost didn't hear what the man said. "From our observations, your friend is not one to be trifled with. But he does have one clear weakness and we need that since he is getting a tad too close if you get my drift." He got on his feet, lazily summoning a pair of arrow guns. "So I will be taking the kid if you don't mind."
He got Tifa's reply on that with her punching the spot where he stood seconds ago.
Braig did expect she would response like that. Landing on a fallen pillar, he reloaded his guns, grinning. "Let's see how good of a dancer you are." And he fired several shots at her.
Tifa dodged most of them, only two hit and slightly stunned her but that was all he needed. Braig ran around her while firing several explosive bullets that was held back by his gravity element. They only moved when he was once again up on the second floor. Tifa hasn't time to dodge this attack and ended on the flowerbed, however not beaten just yet, she fits angrily her hand and jumped up after the one-eyed man who jumped away from her attack that destroyed most of the second floor.
He landed near the flowers, glancing grinning to her. "Easy there, can't have you destroy rest of this-" He got rudely interrupted by Tifa slamming him into the nearby wall and would probably have cracked his skull with one of her punches if he hadn't teleported away. Tifa eyes caught him and charged at the man, Braig kept on dodging her attacks, trying to distance himself since his attack worked best at a distance while Tifa tried getting in close because most of her attacks were with punching. Braig succeed getting a bit away from her and shot a powerful bullet at her that send Tifa through the room but she quickly regained herself and landed on the wall so hard that the flowers underneath her flew up in a rain of petals.
Tifa turned her eyes to the man in the end of the room, noticing he was out of bullets and refused to let that chance slip up. She took off from the wall, grabbed and hurled the defenseless Braig into the floor that broke from the impact. She landed on the floor again, scanning the broken area for the man but when there were no signs of him coming back up, both she and the girl Marlene presumed that he was out for good. Marlene ran giggling over to Tifa who smiled waited for the girl to come over. None of them saw the figure appear on a pillar and put the two arrow guns together into a sniper rifle.
Braig smirked aimed at the unaware Tifa. "Game set." He fired. "And match."
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"What was that?" Sora asked from the echoed sound of a shot, looking around the ruins he and his friends just had arrived at. The two others looked around for the source as well, that until Kairi spotted someone standing on the church's roof with someone smaller. "Someone is over there!"
Sora and Riku turned and recognized the man right away, or rather what group he was in. "The organization!"
Sora was quick to move towards the church. "Come on!" Although there was no chance for them following Braig, still Sora wanted to check what one of the members of the organization was doing inside this building. Inside the church Sora spotted a familiar face and ran over to the badly wounded Tifa, he healed her and asked worried. "Are you alright?"
Tifa slowly got on her feet, nodding, that until she remembered what the one-eyed man came here for. "Marlene!" She scanned the church but no little girl was around. "No..."
Riku stepped a little closer to Tifa telling her a little sad they couldn't stop the the one-eyed man. "We spotted another person beside Xigbar, a little girl, was that Marlene?"
Tifa nodded sad. "Tes... he needed her to stop Cloud."
"Cloud's here?" Sora asked both surprised and happy another alliance was in this world.
Again Tifa nodded and thought it might be best explaining Sora and his two friends of the situation in this world and what happen after Cloud disappeared in his battle with Sephiroth.
"Cloud succeed defeating Sephiroth, but not before he did harm to this world." Tifa explained the trio standing around her, she told them that Sephiroth used his darkness to taint the world and unlike most other worlds residents that have more or less gotten a bit immune against the Heartless's darkness, the people here couldn't handle the darkness and that caused a lot of people to get horrible sick. "Most people call it Stigma, and they believe the Shinra company is causing this, but I believe it is the darkness Sephiroth pledged the world is causing this." Tifa sighed but did continue. "The stigma is mostly affecting children, and for each day; we lose a child to the Heartless."
"How horrible." Kairi said horrified by how bad it was going for this world. This was worse than when their island- their world got swallowed, at least the people in their world got mostly unscathed away from the whole deal.
Sora went over to Tifa, like many other time when coming to a new world; he could not stand by and do nothing when he could help. "Anything we can do?"
Tifa turned to him, feeling uncertain what Sora and his two friends could do. Well, maybe they could help Cloud. "I would be grateful if you aid Cloud, he could use some friends in all of this."
"Sure, any idea where he might be?"
Tifa pointed towards the setting sun in the horizon. "Outside the city you will find him, last I heard he was heading towards the forgotten capital. He is searching for a cure to the stigma."
And that's where they would go.
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Inside the Forgotten capitol, Braig went along with a small flock of children, all had been coming here in the promise that they could be healed from the stigma, the one-eyed man stopped the following children near a lake that glows slightly in the darkness thanks to its unnatural purity. "Wait here." He told them and took the scared but also struggling Marlene over to a slender man with same cat-like eyes as Sephiroth, this man stood on the other side of the lake and had patiently waited for Braig to deliver all the diseased children to him. "That should be enough for your plan." Braig said and took a firmer grip around Marlene, making her stop struggling in fright.
The silver-haired man smiled to him. "Yeah, they will help us find mother." He went towards the awaiting children, spread his arms in a welcome and said to the slightly frighten children.
"Mother has given me a very special gift." The man began speaking "She gave this gift, to all her children. That's right." He smiled almost friendly towards the flock of children "You and I are brethren, brothers and sisters chosen to inherited mother's legacy." His smile faltered, but continued on his speech in anger towards what he thought was doing them harm "But this world doesn't improve that at all. It's doing anything it can to hold us back. That's why it's wreaking our bodies with pain and filling our hearts with doubt." The children flinched slightly by those words because all knew exactly what pain this man spoke about, a pain they all so much wanted gone. And the man- Kadaj knew it, he knew that's would be the reason why they came and he would use it to his advantages, although he saw this new army of his as more than mere minions. "Now I shall heal you and we will go to mother together, we will join as a family and strike back at this world." He once again smiled to the freighted children.
"Do as I do." Kajad went into the pure water, for each step deeper in the water, it got tainted by the darkness he was the vessel for. He took a handful of the tainted water and drank it. After a moment of hesitating, the children followed his example, but none of them got healed as they had hoped. Instead, the new darkness only made them almost as mindless as a Heartless, although not yet having the need to hunt for hearts. Instead, these children would not be able to make real thoughts, they were trapped in a darkness and only a stronger darkness, in this case, Kajad would make them react and do what he wanted.
On the shore Braig watched the darkness further taint the hearts of these poor children, he watched them, one by one stand with slightly glowing yellow eyes, waiting for Kajad or someone else dark hearted would give them the next command. He grinned at the sight although he wasn't completely sure why.
"Was this part of your master plan?"
Braig snapped out from his glee and turned to the captured Adria, his smile faded from the condition she was in- what he did to her. He admitted that she did put one hell of a fight, then again; he was the one who trained her.
Adria eyed the man before her, no longer sure if it was her uncle or Xehanort she spoke to anymore. "An old tale said that light from children created these worlds we live in when darkness swallowed the former." She turned her eyes to the zombie-like children. "So tainting these children proves that theory wrong? That even the purity of a child can be darkened. You just forgot one single thing old man." She turned back to the watching Braig, shooting him a death glare. "The story was just a fairy tale and you're killing children to prove it."
"It merely proves that no one is pure, darkness is part of a child as well." Braig replied with a calmness that was so unlike him, not that the man noticed, though.
Adria rolled her eyes of what she saw as obvious. "Of course it is, you can't have light without a shadow, a moron could have told you that."
Braig narrowed his eye of that remark, although a small part of him found Adria's sneering kinda funny. "Every moron?" He asked, smirking teasing to her.
Adria wouldn't get further into the subject, instead, she asked him. "Tell me something Braig... is all of this really worth your goal? Whatever that is."
That took Braig off guard, at first, he wanted to say that, of course, all of this was worth it, but... looking at the children, knowing that the unnatural darkness that got into their bodies was slowly killing them. Looking at Adria, the once child he trained and gave her wise-cracks on life. He remembered back when he trained her to become a guard like him. Thinking back to those times, he realized how much he actually enjoyed those days. How much he appreciated his comradery with Dilan and Aleaus.
Heck!
He was friends with those two! He even had a decent relationship with Even and got a few laughs out from the back then very shy Ienzo. That all changed when Xehanort came, promised him power, promised him a keyblade; the strongest weapon of them all. He wasn't interested in power, and how the man spoke about it. it got him fascinated in the keyblade its abilities and... and... that had been enough for Xehanort to drag him into this— but before Braig could realize how wrong he was going into this mess. His train of thoughts got broken by Xehanort's heart fragment inside his own heart, snapping him back to this experiment and that nothing else mattered, not even his own blood.
"It is." He said, but unlike others who couldn't read him as well as Adria wouldn't have seen the spark of doubt flashing through his eye for a split second.
"Tell yourself that enough times and you might believe it." Adria said hard, not really the person to show sympathy, it wouldn't really help Braig anyway. he was more the tough love kind of guy.
Braig eyed her once before he left but Xehanort's heart couldn't remove the thoughts Adria's words made him think. He hated being confronted, being the one pulled around by the nose with words, he wanted to be the one doing that.