An Ing's Ideas (miscellaneous snips)

[FormlessAlien]

"Whoever's holding me, please don't kill me," I say resignedly.

Someone says words, and I catch absolutely none of them. The arms holding me shift.

"I can't hear you over the ringing," I tell the source of the voice. "Too many explosions."

The arms shift again, and I blink, and my sight's back enough to see that the person who's holding me is a human with green hair. She also has sword handles like I saw in that video once, gauntlet blades or something, or maybe those handles are more like punching daggers, I don't remember the name anyway and it doesn't really matter, but she's not killing me with them, so.

…It would be very nice if my ears would stop ringing so much.

"…ust floated up a couple minutes before the horse monster attacked," I hear Lars saying, after a bit more feeling helpless and bad in the green-haired human's arms. "She called me 'human' right before it did. Said her name was 'Chareek' or something."

"Charririk," I correct him, like I have to with most humans. I turn my head off green-haired-human's shoulder to put Lars and whoever he's talking to in my line of sight, and that's a lot of humans actually, and my tail flicks nervously. "Also I can mostly hear now, and thank you for not killing me."

"You're welcome," green-haired-human says in a smirk-y tone of voice. Smug. Smug is the word I was looking for. I try not to grumble.

The big, wide human with round glasses steps out in front of the group. "Miss Charririk, I am Master Payne," he says, and he sounds about as big as he looks, and at least he doesn't loom over me that much since I'm being held up, but I also can't move, so that's. Not better. "I must ask, what is another magician doing in my circus?"

"Seeing another person for the first time in weeks," I answer unhappily, putting on a frown. Then I feel the arms around me tighten, and I remember that I need to not be rude right now, and add, "Um, Master Payne, sir," failing at keeping my tail still. "I didn't plan to come here."

Payne looks over at one of the humans behind him, and then he sighs. "You can stay with us for a while, if you'd like, provided you don't intentionally harm anyone here."

I feel my tail moving in a lot of conflicting ways, but I try my best to put my smile on my face. "Thank you, sir. I won't hurt anyone." Hopefully I don't have to run soon, cause not having people to go back to is not good. At all.

Payne stares at me for a bit longer, and I try my best not to shiver, and then he turns away and looks at his humans. "Alright, everyone, back to bed. Miss Clay, we'll discuss the rest in the morning. Lars, are you well to keep your watch?"

Lars nods.

"Then I will leave you to it. Everyone else, clear up, we've travel in the morning."

And with that, the humans start walking back to their wagons. Well, most of them do. Lars goes back to the kind-of-scattered fire and starts putting it back together, and green-haired-human is still… holding me.

"Put me down, please, green-haired-human," I say, and even though I tried to keep it out, I'm sure some of my helplessness and maybe-anger and other bad-things came through in it, because I'm not good at that kind of thing.

"You're not very good at pretending, are you?" she whispers in my ear with that same smug from before, which is aggravating, but she does put me dooooh wait. I swallow hard.

"N-not good at pretending what?" I try, because if I don't try I definitely won't succeed, but also I start backing up and swing my shield around just in case cause she has a lot of muscles and two swords and knows about my disguise and is she a guard Dragons she might try to kill me for lying!

Green-haired-human's smirk turns into a frown. "I'm not gonna attack you, Charririk," she says, which is definitely good, and she actually gets my name right, and also the smirk is out of her voice too. Then she adds, "I don't care that you're a construct," and I glace down at my hands (still pink scales) and curl my tail.

"But I'm a humanoid? I'm not a construct?"

Green-haired-human's frown shifts, and she furrows her brow. "I mean, I don't care that a Spark made you what you are."

That makes my tail curl harder. "I use Wishcraft, so I don't actually know the lesser cantrips, and also I'm not sure anyone but wizards ever learn Spark?"

Green-haired-human huffs. "This isn't your first language, is it," she says, in a tone that makes the question not sound like a question, which makes me huff.

"It's my fourth, but even if I haven't spoken it for years I know it almost as well as my egg-language!" I tell her grumpily, lifting myself off the ground again so I can look down at her. "It's you people who all have weird accents!"

"And yet," green-haired-human says, "you call your first language your egg language."

"Yeah, cause the first language I knew was the one I hatched with, just like everyone else, Darast!" I pull myself towards her, tail lashing. "What, were you hatched speechless, green-haired-human? Is that what happened? Huh?"

And then I hear Lars say, "Hatched?" from behind me, and very abruptly I remember that I'm supposed to be human right now, and humans are mammals and I should know that since I've been one and not remembering being born shouldn't change that and I'm an idiot!

"I meant born!" I say, and I try to sound casual, but it comes out as a squeak, and I feel my tail twist in embarrassment. I spin to face Lars and try clearing my throat. "I was definitely born," I tell him in a much steadier voice.

He keeps staring at me. I resist the urge to hide behind my shield… mostly. I do still wave it kind of between us, a little bit. "Sure," he says. He doesn't sound like he means it, though.

Behind me, green-haired-human makes a 'snrk' sound. "D-don't worry, I'm not good at subtle either!"

I turn around and cross my arms. "Weren't you supposed to sleep or something?" I grumble, glaring at her stupid smile. "Not laughing at me for being terrible at—at everything?"

"Kid, this is a circus," Lars says. "Nobody's gonna care about whatever you're trying to hide."

"And you're just bad at lying. You stabbed that horse monster while you were blind."

"But I couldn't kill it, and it would've killed me if whatever the bright-thing that killed it didn't happen, and that doesn't even matter cause all the towns kick me out when they find out what I am!"

"This is a circus," green-haired-human says, just like Lars did. "It's not a town, we're used to weird, nobody's gonna kick you out for being a lizard person."

"Darastrix sim," I mutter as kind-of a joke except it comes out mostly angry and scared.

"That's an oddly specific example, Zeetha…"

I glare at green-haired-human-who-is-apparently-Zeetha again, and then I sigh and look back towards Lars. "Here," I snap, and I pull my hat off my head, and his eyes go wide. "Still not caring?"

"How did you do that?" he asks with—is that, is he impressed? "Did the hat do that? That trick would pull in a lot of people!"

"See?" Zeetha says.

I blink, and my tail curls, and something inside me feels weird. "You're not trying to kill me," I say quietly. I look down at my hands. Still pink, still scaled, I'm still me, and they're not doing anything, and they said things and. "Okay." I clench my fists and squeeze my eyes shut and try to figure out what I'm feeling and it doesn't work and I give up. "I'm'onna go by the fire," I mumble, and I flick myself over towards the logs cause I don't trust myself to concentrate when like this and also I need to sit down and. My stomach feels weird.

"Are you still hungry, kid?" Lars asks in a voice. A… gentle, voice, maybe, human-me thinks it's gentle. I feel my tail shivering against the log, no, that's all of me shivering, why am I shivering.

"Yeah, sh-should be," I say shakily. "D-didn't eat when I w-woke up. Forgot to h-hunt."

"Okay." I hear footsteps, and then a latch opening, and then some metal clinking, and then there's a warm metal bowl being pushed into my hands. "Here you go."

I nod. "Mmh." I think about putting the bowl in my magic, but holding it is nice cause it's warm and I can focus on that, so I just lift the bowl to my mouth and pour some in and it's just barely too hot so it feels like I'm swallowing fire and it tastes better than anything ever. "Mmh," I say again.

There's a bit of quiet, after that, when all that happens is me holding the warm bowl and eating hot stew and slowly calming down, and then Lars says, "How old are you, kid?"

"Eleven, probly," I answer, and then I remember that he's human, and I add, "and that's adult for a kobold, so I'm not a kid," and I drink more stew. I'm almost not shaking anymore.

"Okay," he says. Then, quieter, maybe I wasn't supposed to hear it, "Not used to being on this side of things…"
I open an eye to look at him, feeling my tail start twitching again despite me. "Of what things?"

"I have a… panic thing, usually, when stuff like this happens." Lars looks away, and it's hard to tell with the light coming from just a fire, but I think he's blushing. "I'm kinda surprised I'm as calm as I am after fighting that horse thing oh hell there it is!" And now his eyes are wide and he's getting pale and I have to agree cause oh Hells.

I pull myself off my log and over towards Lars-the-nice-human and flick my fingers to reach into my backpack and pull the blanket out of my bedroll because I think blankets help with panic great Dragons I've researched this why can't I remember is it names? I think names are something—"um, Lars?" I say in a voice that doesn't come out calm at all and I'm not helping fuck but I push forwards anyway. "I have a blanket, um, would you like a blanket, Lars?"

He looks back at me, and his pupils are really round and big which probably shouldn't look so weird to me when I've been living on the surface for years, and he blinks. "S-sure?" he says, sounding baffled and not afraid which is very much an improvement.

"Okay, Lars." I sweep my hand over the blanket held in my magic and Will it warm, and then I reach out and wrap it around the human's shoulders and I silently curse human-me for never memorizing things properly um I think asking is good maybe he knows, so I ask, "Is there anything that helps when you, um, panic? That I can do?"

"Um I don't know," Lars says kind of haltingly, sounding confused. He grabs the corners of my blanket and pulls it tighter around him, and the bigness of humans hits me again cause it only covers half of him and I can wrap that blanket around myself almost twice. "I, usually, it just goes, for a while."

"Okay." I nervously lick my teeth and set myself down on the log beside him. "Lemme know if you can think of anything, okay, Lars?" I tell him, mostly cause I think talking to him is helping since he looks less scared than he was but also cause knowing more about how to help is definitely good.

He nods slowly. "Sure." Then he turns to look at the fire again, and he doesn't look that tense, and my tail's twitching gradually shifts into happier flicks.

Then someone says "Who's that?" from behind me and everything's bad again.

"That's the kid," Lars says, looking over his shoulder at whoever talked. "Charuri—"

"Charririk," I correct him automatically, looking down at my mostly-empty not-warm-anymore bowl and trying not to let what I'm feeling show on my tail. "Like charir urich."

"…Wasn't she a kid?" the new-person says.

'I'm eleven, so shut the fuck up' runs through my head, and I snort, and then I remember I'm in some kind of deathworld and nobody but me's ever gonna get that joke again, and I droop. "Disguise," I say blankly. "Otherwise people try to kill me and kick me out of towns."

"That's a damn good disguise," new-person says, closer, and then a light-haired human walks into my line of sight with some kind of trident thing in her hands. "Anyway, we're gonna burn the horse beastie's corpse to make sure it's dead, so we need the fire."

"Alright," Lars says, and I see him stand up.

I squeeze my eyes shut and my tail twists. "...Do I need to leave?"

"No, you're fine," Light-Haired-Human says. Like… everyone else has. I—Maybe I'm... paranoid, but even if fiction-me isn't real I've still been—I'm still real to me, and I need to stop thinking about this. "Might get stinky, though."

I take a deep breath and do my best to straighten out my tail and open my eyes again, and Lars is using my blanket to grab the pot off the stove. "Uh. H-here," I say, and I sweep my hand out and wrap my power around the pot and lift it up. "Where do you want this? And I can, um, move the horse-thing, too."

"Well, you're full of neat tricks," Light-Haired-Human says.

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SV loves to eat the spaces between my paragraphs. It causes annoyance.

 

[FormlessAlien]

My tail flicks, and I open my mouth to say something snarky, and the words catch in my throat. "...Where? On the pot thing," I say instead.

Lars waves a hand vaguely. "Just on the other side of the log is okay."

I nod and wave my hand to move the pot in my magic to the outside of the circle of logs, and then I pull my hand back and reach out to the pile of horse-thing parts, and my thoughts and magic split to grab... most of the parts at once.

"Well, that's horrible," Light-Haired-Human says from her place in the corner of my eye. She looks like she's staring at the... the bits. That don't look like real organs, or anything from a living-thing, except they're made of meat, which brings back. Memories. That I don't wanna have.

"Fucking aberrations," I mutter in English, and I sweep my claws across in front of me and slam the bits into the fire, and then the fire decides to flare up in my face and I definitely don't flinch at all, and Light-Haired-Human doesn't laugh, except I do, and she does, and I'm sure my tail somehow manages to twist even more unhappily than it already was as my head drops into my hands.

"D-don't worry, kid, I'm not laughing at you, I'm--"

"You're definitely laughing at me!" I interrupt, in Gnomish again, making sure to put a frown on my face so Light-Haired-Human can understand what I'm feeling when I glare at her, and why do I keep reacting like this, and I drop my head back into my hands. "S-sorry. Darast..." Wh--is this a pride thing? I know when I--when human-me started writing m--fiction me, I did everything to look as strong as I could, and there's the height-thing, I know I don't like being lower than other-people's eyeline now I know what to look for, but--well, nobody laughed at me, really, except the others in the tribe before I ran away, but I was smart enough not to shout at them, back then!

"Hey." Light-Haired-Human walks closer, I can tell cause I'm looking at her feet, and I flick my fingers to put my shield in her way as subtly as I can, but I'm sure she notices, cause I'm terrible, and she doesn't try to hit me anyway. "Kid, you're--"

"Charririk," I tell her in a quieter voice than I meant to use. "Have a name."

"Chareereek," she says close enough to right, "I'm Pix, it's okay, you're fine."

I pull my knees up under my chin, and I feel my tail shiver. "...Everything's w-wrong, actually," I mutter under my breath in my egg-language. "But thanks."

Lars sits down on the log beside me. "Do you want your blanket back?" he asks in that same gentle voice from before.

I nod, cause maybe it'll help even though I'm not shaking cause of the cold, and he shuffles, and a warm weight settles over my shoulders, and I grab it with clumsy fingers and pull it tight around me.

Pix-person walks around in front of me, and I look up, and she's got a look on her face human-me thinks is concern. "I've watch in three hours, so I need to get some sleep. Okay?"

I mumble something that probably doesn't sound like words and set my chin back on my knees and shut my eyes.

"Sleep well," Lars says. "See you in the morning."

Having people around is good for me, or it's supposed to be good for me, and here I am being like this, and I don't even--I shake my head and try (for the dozenth time tonight) to straighten my tail.

"You okay?"

"Nnneed to stop thinking. Everything's wrong with me. I'll live." Probably. If I don't channel too much power. If past-me didn't do the math wrong. Dragons, I'm an idiot. "I. should." I take a shuddering breath. "Is it safe to sleep here?"

"I'll wake you up if something happens," Lars says. "That's why I'm on watch."

Right. "Of course." I'm not alone here. And people aren't killing me, and I need to get that through my head, but right now I just don't wanna be. I flick my fingers and grab the rest of my bedroll to just use the tarp-part as a pillow, and I lay myself down on the log with my magic, and it's really not very comfortable, but it doesn't matter. "See you later," I say, and I stop holding onto my




"...inda cute like that."

"We still have to wake her up, though, and it can't feel good to have her, uh, horns stuck like that."

"Mmmng?"

"Oh, she's waking up on her own. With what she already slept through, I'm surprised."

...I... don't know that voice. I carefully open my eyes and try to sit up, and my head just jerks in place, and "Oh, I'm stuck," I realize out-loud. I blink up at the orangeish sky and try to sit up again--and a hand reaches past my eyes which are now very wide.

"Here," somebody says, probly the one who has the hand that I think's on my horn, and my head moves, and then I'm not stuck any more, and I pull away and scramble backwards and run headfirst into something hard.

"Ow! Fuck!" I snap my hand out without thinking and try to lift myself up, but I'm too big, so my magic slides off without doing anything but flipping me over onto my side which does not help.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you!" whoever it was says, and I push myself off the ground again and get my eyes to focus, and it's another Light-Haired-Human, but she doesn't look like Pix-person, so I definitely need new adjectives, and also she's not holding any weapons. "Are you alright?"

I blink, and my tail curls confusedly against the ground. "...You look like I don't feel yet," I say, which. Actually doesn't make any sense at all. "Uh." I scramble to come up with better words. "I mean, you look like your soul's hanging onto your body by a thread, and my head hurts and so does my pride but I'm fine."

"That's an... odd expression, but I can't say you're wrong," Light-Haired-Not-Pix-Human says. She stands up straighter in the way I recognize cause it looks the same as I do whenever I'm standing on my feet after I'm done filling my vials, and she reaches a hand down towards me. "I heard you're the one who was using the floating sword last night? The one who Master Payne called a magician?"

I look at the human's hand for a moment, tail curling more, and then I remember that that's a thing you do when people are on the ground (at least in fiction? I don't think even human-me ever did that? Did I just forget?), and I grab the human's hand. "Yes, that's--" I start, and then I yelp as she pulls me up to and then almost off of my feet, because I'm light enough even I could lift me over my head when I'm not soulburnt to the Abyss, and she does a sort of startled laugh thing, and I growl. "That's me, and I do have a sword--" and I remember I'll get kicked out if I hurt someone, and I hurry to still my tail "--and I definitely won't hit you with it at all, but still don't laugh at me! Please."

Infuriatingly, Light-Haired-Not-Pix-Human looks like she's trying not to laugh at that, too, but at least she succeeds. "I'm sorry, I was just... surprised you were so light, with how quickly you and your sword were moving around. I can't imagine any sort of magnetism engine that could do that weighing less than forty kilograms without support infrastructure, and--"

"I don't use magnets for my motion-magic, Light-Haired-Not-Pix-Human," I interrupt, still feeling annoyed, "and my Array's not made of--of stuff that weighs things, however you say that in Gnomish."

"Oh?" the human says, staring down at me with an excited look in her eyes that I don't think I like. "What might this Array be made of, then, Long-Horned-Pink-Lizard?"

"Dragon," I correct, and I reach out with my hand and my soul and latch onto the magic around me and pull it very deliberately messily through the shapes to make my protect-magics so I can hold enough power to lift myself off my feet up to the human's eye-level and glare back at her better. "And I manipulate the thre-- the Weave through the interface of the Arcane Array I shaped on the surface of my soul, and if things go the way they should, I won't even need the Weave in a few months."

"And this 'Arcane Array' allows you to fit this 'motion-magic' of yours in a size and weight so small as yours, hmm?" Light-Haired-Not-Pix-Human leans closer to me, and I want to pull myself back but I don't,and her voice doesn't sound right, there's this whistling that feels like it's pressing against my mind, and she smiles really really wide. "How might I go about making such a thing? Can they be created in objects, or will we need to fetch some volunteers?"

"I am not gonna start cutting runes into people's skin for you, human!"

"So this does need volunteers! And a knife!" The human spins around, looking wide-eyed and wide-smiled at the people around, and she dramatically sweeps an arm out towards--Lars? I didn't even notice-- "I have need of your sword!"

Lars opens his mouth, but I don't wait to hear what he was gonna say, and I swing myself around in front of the crazier-and-crazier human and call my sword into my magic in front of me and thrust it point-first into the ground to be a wall. "Not only is-- No! You don't use a sword for careful work like this, it's too clumsy and it's not clean, and--What am I saying, it doesn't matter, we're not cutting runes into anyone but me!"

The human's grin get wider somehow, and she reaches towards me. "And so we have a--" I pull myself to the side, her hand follows and wraps around my left arm, and she pulls "--volunteer! Do you have an alternative to that clumsy and unclean sword, Miss Dragon, or are we--"

My sword twists with a wave of my free hand, and I press it serrated edge first into the human's side hard enough I'm sure she'll feel it through her clothes. "Let go of me! Now!"

"CHARRIRIK! MISS CLAY!" a voice bellows from somewhere to my right.

"WHAT!" I shout at the same time The-Crazy-Human-Who's-Apparently-Clay does, turning to look at--Oh fuck.

"Maecryx Payne?! Uh!" I let go of my metal-sword with my magic and it flickers into nothing beside me, and I try to hide my shivering tail behind me. "I was not hurting anyone, I was only-- See, she grabbed me and I just--" Clay lets go of my arm, finally, and I pull myself a dozen feet away from her so she can't get at me again and mutter "Thanks" on reflex "--Anyway, I was just threatening her so she'd let me go, no harm meant, don't make me leave--!"

"I saw well enough, Charririk," Payne says, "and you need not leave, but you would do well to avoid situations like this in the future. And you, Miss Clay!"

"Y-yes?" Clay-person says in a voice that actually sounds normal again, and I risk looking at her out of the corner of my eye, and her eyes are a very different kind of wide than before. She looks like someone who just took her body back from another and doesn't quite know what it did.

"We do not perform experiments on people against their will in this circus!"

Clay-person gasps. "I would ne--" She looks back over at me, and I can see the moment she realizes what actually just happened on her face. "Oh sweet lightning I was about to, I am so sorry."

I give Master Payne another careful look, and he's not glaring at me, so he's probably actually noy making me leave, and then I turn back to the maybe-possessed human. "You'd better be!" I snap, not trying to stop my tail from lashing angrily behind me. "I probably wouldn't even live through any additions to my Array right now, I'm pulled practically to the edge of my generous capacity calculations as-is! And you don't sound like you'd even know what you were doing!"

Clay-person looks away from me and also embarrassed or disappointed or something. "You're right, I wouldn't. But, um, I could learn?"

I... blink. Blankly. "...What?"

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E: Corrected the reference to the limit of Charririk's telekinesis from weight to size, as is proper for its origin.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Information
Follow Roxas's lead​

Xion glances at the words in the corner of the world, and then back at the yellow-hair person who is Roxas. The words are something they already knew this time.

"Let's go," Roxas says, and then he starts walking off. Xion follows.

Then, things appear in flashes of light, and Xion narrows their eyes and reaches for their weapon.

Information
Defeat the Heartless!​

Xion's weapon doesn't appear in their hand, and the weapon Roxas is holding looks like Xion's weapon, but that's not important, because Xion has to fight. They remember the thing they use for fighting that isn't the weapon is magic, so they hold out their hand and shout "Fire!" and something warm and strong flows through their arm and surges forward into one of the things the words called Heartless in a flash, and that Heartless burns up, and Xion steps to the side to let one of the Heartless's attacks fly past them, and then they pull on their power again and say "Fire!" again, and magic shoots out and burns up another Heartless, and the last Heartless explodes as Roxas hits it with his weapon again, and all that's left of the Heartless is some black mist and a pink thing floating into the sky.

It's a Heart.​

A pink Heart floating into the sky, apparently. The words know a lot.

When Xion looks away from the words and the disappearing Heart, and back to Roxas, they notice that Roxas is staring at them. They wonder why… There's not anything very interesting about them.

Then, Roxas turns away and starts walking off the yellow onto the red between the buildings.

Information
Follow Roxas's lead​

Xion follows. They wonder why the ground here is yellow and red, instead of white and grey like in the Castle? There's other colors too, here, like brown and pink and green, that aren't in the Castle except for on the people in it sometimes. Xion thinks it would be nicer if all these colors were in the castle too, cause if the words didn't tell them things about where they were supposed to go, they would probably get lost a lot, cause everything looks the same. Maybe they could—

Information
Defeat the Heartless!​

Xion's eyes narrow, and they look at where the words are pointing, and see more of the short Heartless and another flower Heartless. They gather up power again, more than before, and shout "Fire!" and the power explodes out of their chest this time and spins around them in a glowing ring as they leap into the middle of the Heartless and the magic burns up one of them and sets the other two on fire before it goes away, and then they go to swing at the little one that's still there, and then they remember they don't have their weapon, so they just hit it with their hand instead, which hurts, and then they jump back again. They feel kinda tired already, even though it hasn't been much time…

Recover magic more quickly by hitting things!​

Oh, Xion's running out of magic. Already. They lean to the side to let more of the flower Heartless's green ball thing go past, and think about doing more magic, but then they don't. They know in The Fight they used a lot more, but they don't have their weapon either… and how are they supposed to hit things, when they don't have their weapon and hitting with their hand hurts?

Oh. Maybe don't hit things? Until you have a weapon?​

Xion frowns. The words not knowing something is weird, but they're probably right about that, but how are they supposed to fight if using magic is harder than it should be and they can't hit things?

A stick.​

Xion looks at what the words are pointing at this time, ducking one of the little Heartless charging without thinking about it, and looking at it makes them frown even more than they were before, even though they don't know why, but they see what the words mean, so they dive for the piece of wood and snatch it up from the ground in the middle of their roll, and then they spin and hit the only little Heartless that's left, which sends it flying but doesn't hurt it, but it does make the thing so Xion can pull magic out of it, and they feel a little less tired. Then, Roxas hits that Heartless with his weapon and it explodes into another Heart, which is a bit of a shame since that means Xion won't be able to get more magic from it, but there'll be more later, so it's fine.

And Roxas stares at them again. They wonder why he keeps doing that?

He fights like he doesn't know what he's doing.​

Xion thinks back to the bits they've seen of Roxas swinging his weapon, and they understand why the words say that.

"…Why do you have a stick?" Roxas asks.

Xion tilts their head. They… don't know how to talk. Fighting's the only thing they know how to do, really…

You say words when you cast magic!​

…Ah, they suppose that they do, so maybe they actually do know… They open their mouth. "…Ma-gic," they say, and they think they have the words mostly right.

"You were doing magic before, though," Roxas says. He's still staring pretty hard.

"…To… get magic back," they say, and the words are easier than they were before.

Very good, Xion!​

Xion smiles. They like when the words say they're good.

Roxas blinks a few times and then looks down at his weapon. "How does a stick help get magic back, though?"

Xion shrugs. They say, "Recover magic more quickly by hitting things," cause that's what the words told them.

"…Huh," Roxas says. He looks down at his weapon in his hand, frowning. Then he looks back up, and turns back to the way he was leading them before. "Let's go."

Information
You know what to do.​

Xion does. They follow Roxas's lead.

-----​

The fight against the Heartless that Xion and Roxas were actually sent out to kill doesn't end up being that hard, since even though Xion's way slower than they were in The Fight, the poison flower Heartless is even slower, and fire is also really strong against it, and Xion only has to push Roxas out of the way of a few green balls that would've hit him before the Heartless explodes into a Heart like all the others Roxas kills.

"You're good at this," Roxas says as the Heart fades away in the air above them. His voice sounds… odd. Xion feels like they should do something.

Information
Reassure Roxas of his strength!​

"…You're strong," Xion says after a moment, though they don't really understand why the words are telling them to. "Just need practice."

And then Roxas smiles, instead of frowning like he was, and Xion is thankful for the millionth time that the words are there to help them. "Thanks, Xion," he says in a more normal voice.

Xion nods. They feel like they did another good thing.

-----​

When they get to the portal thing that goes back to the Castle, Roxas stops and looks over at Xion.

"…Go ahead and RTC without me," Roxas says quietly. "I've got someplace to be."

Xion looks at him for a moment. They wonder what he's doing, if he has another mission…? But they guess it's not something they should worry about. So, they nod, and start walking towards the portal thing again.

They'll see him tomorrow anyway.

-----​

When she wakes up the next day, Xion knows something's different. She doesn't know what's different, but there's this… feeling, inside her, like something's shifted. Lying on her bed staring at the ceiling hasn't helped her figure out what it is, though…

Information
Report for a mission.​

Xion nods. The words are right, she is supposed to go to that grey place every day. So, she sits up, swings her legs over the edge of the bed, stands up, grabs her stick off the table, and walks out of the room.

To your left.​

Xion nods again. She knew that one, but the directions are nice to have.

A few hallways in, Xion passes a wiggly thing

Dusk​

a Dusk using some things on a stick to hit the ground kind of, and she doesn't understand what they're doing, but they're doing whatever it is with a stick, so they must be dedicated. She nods at them, and hopes both she and they will have their own weapons soon.

I think it was cleaning?​

Xion doesn't really know what cleaning is, since it's not fighting and fighting is the only thing she knows how to do, but she nods at the words anyway, cause they're usually right.

The Castle is just as boring as usual the rest of the way there, and Xion thinks she would have gotten lost at least twice without the words helping her, and then Xion walks out into the grey place, and most of the usual colors are there, but not all of them. She looks up at the words, hoping they know what changed.

Demyx talked about people going to Castle Oblivion.​

Well, Xion doesn't know where Castle Oblivion is, but that mostly explains things. She nods, and then walks over to blue

Saïx​

Saïx, and waits for him to tell her what to do.

"Xion," Saïx says. Xion looks over at him. "Why do you have a stick?"

"Magic comes back faster by hitting things," she says, and immediately regrets it, because Saïx's unhappy face gets mean, and Xion suddenly feels cold.

"Are you not one of the keyblade's chosen?" he asks, and it doesn't sound like a normal question, it sounds worse somehow. "Or was your recruitment a waste?"

Xion takes half a step back. "I-I'm good at fighting," she says shakily. She can't look away from Saïx's glaring eyes.

"Drop the stick," Saïx orders.

Xion does, and it clatters on the ground.

"Now, summon your keyblade."

Information
Summon your weapon!​

Xion reaches out for her weapon, and light flashes in her hand, but her weapon doesn't come.

Oh no.​

She tries again. It's always been easy, except it isn't now, and her weapon isn't there. She steps back.

"Now, Number Fourteen," Saïx says in an angry voice.

Please!​

This is bad, this is bad! Xion can fight without her weapon, but whatever this is isn't fighting, and she can't do this without it, but it won't come! She needs her weapon to come! She needs it to come or she might lose! She might get hurt, oh no what if Saïx attacks her, can she fight him off without her weapon, she might die!

Xion reaches out again, eyes shut tight, wishing desperately for her weapon to answer her call.

And then there's a weight in Xion's hand.

Thank you…​

Xion opens her eyes. In her hand, pointed at Saïx's head, is her weapon. It looks just like it should, and just like Roxas's does, and it makes her feel strong. She looks around the rest of the room, at the pale hair and the brown hair, and she doesn't know how they fight, but she's sure she could at least hold them off long enough—

Saïx moves, and Xion steps to the side and brings her weapon to catch whatever he's swinging at her—

He nods. "Good. Now wait for your mission." And then he looks away from her, back to the door, like he's ignoring her.
Xion realizes that she's breathing hard. She still feels cold.

You're okay, Xion.​

Xion nods quietly. She wants to shut her eyes, and curl up on the ground, but then she wouldn't be safe. She brings her weapon back, and grabs the handle with her other hand, so she can block stronger stuff, and she backs up towards the window so nobody can get behind her.

You're okay. You're okay.​

Xion leans back on the window. She hopes she won't have to wait here much longer. She wishes she knew how to do the portal thing. She wishes she could leave.

She's shivering.

----------​

Another thing that was on my hard drive, that I like what I have of, but don't have much of. We'll see if the pattern of posting stuff on here getting me to write more of it holds!

 

[Isiri Pudireach]

Information

Click to shrink...

Information-kun needs a body so they can hug her.

 

[FormlessAlien]

The number of nominal Soras would need to increase for that to happen, but there's already, what, four? Five? So that's not really an obstacle. Though I don't expect the text to get pulled out of Xion for some time, if it does at all during the story.

E: Thinking about this has reminded me that there's still, like, a month until Sora Prime gets put in the Wait For The Sequel Pod. Probably won't come up in story.

 

[FormlessAlien]

"I can learn," Clay-person says again, and she looks me in the eyes again, and there's determination and a little bit of that inhuman-ness in hers. "And then I'll know what is and isn't safe, and I won't do something like that again--Oh! And I could help you with that Weave independence thing you're working on!"

"You... grabbed me. To cut random shapes in my scales, presumably while I was still awake, and maybe kill me on accident. Nnnnnno."

"Please?" Clay-person says. "I won't do it again!"

And she doesn't even try to deny it, which, I guess that's better than if she tried to lie to me about something I was there for, but still. I stare flatly at her.

"...I can show you what I know about clanks? Or I could make you a death ray? Do you like death rays?"

I open my mouth to tell her no again, cause, obviously, and then an idea occurs to me, and I stop. "...The thing that killed the horse-thing with the big flash, that was a death ray?" I ask carefully.

Clay-person frowns. "Yes, of course."

"And could you... make something like that, except that instead of a single attack, it makes a beam? That stops a fixed distance from the handle?"

"I... imagine so, though it would likely be very energy-intensive, and I'm not sure why you'd want to limit your--"

"Make me an energy sword, Clay-kiv, and I will teach you how to do magic," I tell the human seriously.

"Ah." Her eyes flick to where my metal-sword was, and they glint in that inhuman way again. "I see. Well--"

"If you're going to do science or magic," Master Payne interrupts, "you'll have to do it in Baba Yaga, since we'll be moving soon, and I imagine driving might distract you."

I look over at him, and back at Clay-person, and then around at the carriages in the dim dawn light, tail curling, with vague memories going through my mind. "...Isn't that a walking… house..." And my eyes catch on a pair of beautiful four-clawed mechanical legs sticking right out the bottom of what's clearly a little-for-a-human house. "...That is beautiful and I want to make one."

"From what I've seen of its mechanics, you don't," Clay-person mutters, and I can practically hear the energy draining out of her, and as she trudges past me towards the less-beautiful-now machine, I can see she's just as dead on her feet as she was when she picked me up. "I drew up plans to fix it, but if Zeetha keeps up with this hell she calls training, I might never have the time to actually do it…"

I carry myself after the human who seems to know a lot about things I want to know about and only wants to cut me up a little. "If there's, um, not time to work on my sword or teach you about the foundation of arcane magic while you're driving, I'm good at memorizing things and my magic moves more precisely than most mortal hands? So I could do some work maybe and also learn how to build those-legs-but-better?"

"Do you know anything about working on clanks, Pink Dragon?"

My tail flicks behind me and my thoughts stutter, because she just called me a dragon and she didn't sound like she was joking nobody here knows what a kobold is I control the narrative I can be a tiny dragon and that's not important right now so I make myself stop thinking about it and haphazardly shove together some words. "I assume clanks are what you call walkers like the house-thing and no not at all also please keep calling me a dragon!"

Clay-person looks over at my face, and then behind me at my tail, and she smirks. "Well then, Dragon," wow it's really unreasonable how happy that makes me feel yet another thing that's wrong with me and this one's barely human-me's fault, "would you care to tell me why I might not?"

"Well, I'm—Uh." I try to get my thoughts back together, squint at the human, and fail at slowing down my tail's waving. "A-are you trying to—Are you telling some kind of joke, or are you using my pride-self-worth-whatever-thing to manipulate me into telling you stuff? Cause I am actually a dragon sorta and I'm gonna fix the sorta when I figure out how fiction-me got my darastrixmior to express itself and hopefully without doing the has-to-tell-the-truth thing she got but at least I know I have it and that's not important right now so kobolds were made by the first dragons either as an accident from the blood of one of them or on purpose to be their servants I think it's the second cause we're hatched able to work and gestation's less than three months and those are really useful traits in a—"

"'Fiction-me'?" Clay-person says, interrupting the thoughts spraying right out of my mouth as words without anything like a filter because if I just said that out loud to someone and everything very suddenly feels bad. Dragons. "What do you mean, 'fiction-me', Dragon?"

I shiver, and my insides start twisting themselves into knots. "Charririk, or Charr, or—" fuck, having a name's more valuable than whatever kobolditis the local pink kobold has about being a dragon. And Clay-person's stopped moving. "So, I. I'm real, first of all. And don't you have… a mech to pilot? Or something? S-something that isn't this?" So I don't have to justify my personhood to you in addition to my-goddamn-self?

"A clank," Clay-person says quietly, not starting to walk again, and she has a sad look on her face I don't think I like very much at all. "You… don't have to, Charririk, but I've met constructs like you before, and if you want to talk about it…"

I clench my fists as hard as I can, and I feel like if my flesh wasn't loosened from my soul, my claws would be going right through my palms. "I am not talking about it," I tell the human unsteadily, trying to keep my everything out of my voice because I think whatever she's doing she's trying to help and just fucking it up to the Abyss and back, and I don't know what my tail's doing right now but it's definitely bad. "I am real, and we're gonna go to the robot-chicken-house and talk about energy swords and breathing lightning and pretend I never said anything at all and you didn't hear it."

"Alright, Charririk."

Clay-person looks away from me and starts towards the giant metal legs again, and I yank myself ahead and up onto the roof and lay my body down on it and curl into a ball and cover my eyes with my arms and try my best to focus on how I can make my dragonsblood safely form a breath weapon when I'm running on real magic instead of Talents and Feats instead of—of anything else because I'm not thinking about anything else right now at all.

I know about a wizard spell for a breath weapon , a dragonscale acts as the material component and it's fifth-circle, but it's supposed to work for like a dozen different breath weapons depending on which scale you use so it's way more than I need, so I could probably strip it down a lot if I actually knew how it worked instead of just a couple finishing-components and that I got annoyed at it overriding the version in the Draconomicon that lasted for ten minutes per level instead of one round that one time and that's not helping at all. Maybe that Plababawhatever-wizard's Fire Breath, I don't think human-me knew about that one and it's only second-circle and it uses almost the same containment-shape as a Fire Blade, that's a better start, even if I'm not gonna be using fire, and the house rumbles under me, and I yelp and pull myself into the air and blink my eyes open.

"You might want to get inside!" Clay-person shouts over the chuff-chuff-chuff of whatever engine's inside this thing from below me. "Or you might get knocked off!"

"Okay!" I shout back, and I carry myself over the front of the roof, and Clay-person's sitting on the mech-house's front porch in front of five levers that look like someone just stuck them anywhere, and I think I get some of what's wrong with this thing, and that's something outside my head to focus on! I drop down above Clay-person's head so I don't have to be so loud, and I ask, "How do these controls work? Why are there five, when there's two legs?"

"Every joint's controlled manually, and--"

"Oh, that sucks! And there's a different--No, there's too many joints. Do the knee and ankle move together?"

"No, it's better and worse than that." Clay-person grabs the middle lever, the one with the grabby-bike-breaks-thing on it, squeezes it, and shoves it forwards, and it clunks, and the house starts to tip back, and then she pushes on the two levers on the side and it clanks more as it straightens out and gets higher off the ground, and I think I know why this thing's got the name it does now. "These--" the human twists her wrists on the outside levers, and the tops of them move without the rest, and the house shifts forwards and then back in a way I think I really wouldn't like if I was actually sitting on it instead of holding myself above it "--are the ankles." She grabs the middle lever again, and pulls it backwards, and it clunks again, and the engine gets quieter wherever it is behind me. "It takes two hands to control a leg, and you need to keep the top-stick aligned while you're doing it, or you'll trip, so there's a very low practical limit on walking speed unless you have an extra pilot, and there's not exactly much room up here."

...My motion-magic could hold all those at once. I feel my tail flick. "Um, I could run all those levers at once? From a distance, too." I look around at all the other carts that aren't moving yet. "Could I... try? How bad would it be to tip this over?"

"At speed, standing up, very," Clay-person says, but even though her words basically say 'You have no idea what you're doing, stop asking,' she sounds intrigued. "...You know what, give it a try."

"Agatha, that is not a good idea!" a voice that doesn't have the sort of sounds that come from a human in it shouts from somewhere inside the house-part of the chicken-house-clank-thing, and I spin to see where it--oh. It's just a big white cat, probably a familiar or something. And it's pointing at me very dramatically with one claw. "Who knows that she knows! She'll find a way to break the linkages or something, and you'll delay the circus for hours fixing it!"

"I'll spot her, Krosp, I'm not an idiot!" Agatha-Clay-person shouts over her shoulder at the cat.

The cat crosses their front legs in front of their chest and turns their head away. "Hmmph! Make your mistakes! See if I care enough to help you fix them!"

...The cat's an asshole. What a shock.

"Well, I'm gonna get a better look at this thing--" I wave a hand at the house-clank-thing as I pull myself up and back "--and then I'll drive it and I won't crash, and the cat will have to eat their words!"

"Yes he will!" Agatha-Clay-person agrees, looking about as annoyed as I'm feeling, I think.

"Oookay, what's this made of," I mutter to myself in my egg-language, and I draw a shape in the air to gather threads onto the right parts of my Array, and then I pull the threads in and sweep my hand over my eyes, and my motion-magic reaches out to wrap gently around everything around me and tell me how easily it slips off. "Steel, brass, wood, front-heavy on top, legs are heavier." I look back at the human. "Agatha-Clay-kiv--"

"Just Agatha, please."

"Agatha," I correct myself, "what's the center lever do?"

"It controls the clutches. Forwards to connect the geartrain, back for the pneumatics, middle's disconnected."

"Sounds like another bad idea, but I'll figure it out!" I reach out, claw my fingers in the air, split my mind in five, and wrap my motion-magic around each stick of the controls. "It can't be too hard!"

 

[FormlessAlien]

It actually turns out to not be that hard, mostly because I can put almost one split-mind to a joint and I'm already experienced in doing complex, precise stuff with my motion-magic. I didn't make any mistakes for the entire time I drove it so far! Aaaand now it's out of fuel!

"When Rivet said it ran through its wood in fifteen minutes," Agatha says as she looks at the dial on the side of the boiler, "I thought she was exaggerating."

"Yeah, I mean, actually powering something like this with burning wood, it makes sense it wouldn't be efficient, but..." I shake my head. I think I've been spoiled by weavetaps and gasoline and electricity. "If I don't have to leave, we should definitely kludge together a fuelless heater for this thing."

Agatha snorts, and smiles crookedly. "And if I ever have time. Right now, though, we need to refill the feed hopper."

"Which you should get to doing now, before you waste more time," Krosp-person says from on top of the fold-out bench-thing in that incredibly-cat tone he uses for everything.

"Yeah, yeah," I mutter, wrapping my motion-magic around myself again with a gesture and lifting myself towards the door, squinting at all the damn sunlight outside. "Is there a store-cart somewhere, or am I cutting down a tree?"

"A tree if you can, I suppose, the igniter can handle green wood, and you wouldn't ask if you couldn't." Agatha looks over at me with that inhuman spark in her eye. "Your sword?"

I shrug. "Swords are good at hitting things." And I don't have to burn my soul to call it. I spin around, and there's plenty of trees around, and the other carts are still moving, so I snap my fingers, and my metal-sword falls into the mostly-automatic part of my magic close to my body. The smallish tree over there a dozen feet off the road looks fine, so I tug myself through the air, gesture wider than I have to to make a false-sword because I have time, and swing my hand and my swords at the bottom of the trunk with all the force my magic can put into them, and they go right through, and the tree starts to fall, and I swing my metal-sword around to smack it into the ground in a direction that won't squish me or anything I care about, just like I do any time my... camp... I shake my head.

"Just think about hitting the log really hard," I tell myself in my egg-language, and I swing my hand and my sword up, and I chop a length off the log that's short enough I can move it with my motion-magic, and I kick the chunk off to the side with my sword's flat, and I lift my sword, and I chop again, and my tail is definitely very still and straight behind me. "How much do we need!" I call back to the chicken-clank-house-thing as I resummon my metal-sword to clean the dirt from digging through juicy wood and into the ground off and get its edge sharp again.

"About a third of that tree!" Agatha yells back, and I'm not that far in yet, so I swing again, and another chunk comes off the log with yet another loud crunch. Then, "Also your force output is something like five times what I expected! It's really impressive!"

I laugh, and shout "Thanks, it has pockets!" in English.

Two more swings and and I'm pretty sure I have enough, so I sweep my fingers through a more complex shape to gather threads over the right parts of myself and stretch out to channel moooooooo bad Charririk do not, you're already leaving a very small margin for error between yourself and death, don't be lazy, and I shake myself clear and just grab a chunk of wood and start tossing them over by the clank-house-chicken-thing manually. Very jealous of fiction-me and her Recharging Magic and her actually-being-properly-connected-to-her-body-and-still-being-powerful right now. Also her veil. She needs to come find me and give me all the nice things immediately or I shall be utterly incapable of affecting her due to one of us not existing.

Oh, wait.

My tail flicks wryly behind me at my terrible, not-funny joke that actually kind of hurts as I follow the last chunk of wood to the house-chicken-clank-thing. "Any more preparing I need to do on the fuel?"

Agatha shakes her head. "They'll fit in the hopper, that's good enough. What was that about pockets, though?"

I blink, and my tail curls a little, because "You speak English?"

"I was Doctor Beedle's assistant, of course I do," the human says, and that name-drop is (really weirdly) not quite as utterly meaningless as I expected, but I have no idea where I remember a Doctor Beedle from. "Again. Pockets?"

"A joke from–" from human-me's life. My tail twists, and I shake my head, and I'm not talking about that. "N-nevermind. My motion-magic doesn't actually have pockets, and it'd probably take me a week or two to design an, uh." I… don't know the word in Gnomish, so I switch to English. "How do you say extradimensional space?"

Agatha's giving me another one of those sad looks I don't really know the meaning of aside from I don't like them, but she doesn't ask, so it's fine. "It's 'extradimensional space'," she says in Gnomish, or that's what I think she says, because one word is straight-up 'extradimensional' and the other means 'space'.

"Well, that's easier than I expected," I say, mostly so it doesn't get quiet outside or in my thoughts, and I start directing my magic to shove one chunk of wood after another into the feed-hopper on the top of the furnace.

"I think the first spatial-folding techniques were discovered in England, or something." Agatha turns a wheel at the bottom of the hopper, and something inside it makes an absolutely terrible noise, and then the gauge on the boiler starts to go back up. "I do wonder, why are you calling Romanian Gnomish?"

I blink. My tail curls. "...This is Romanian?" I didn't expect–Isn't that an Earth language–Oh. "...Is this Earth?" I ask, using the English name, cause I don't know the one in Gno–in Romanian.

"Or Pământ, or Земля, or Terre, or dozens of others," Agatha says casually, turning from the switches and dials and things on the furnace to look at me. "That was in question–Charririk, are you okay? You're shaking."

I blink, and look down at myself, and I am, a lot. "Oh. Um. No, I don't think so." I take a deep breath. Everything feels kind of light. "I don't… I'll just…" I carefully reach out to the wood I dropped, and the motions I have to make aren't precise enough for me to get them wrong. "I think you should maybe drive."

"...Do you need to lie down, Charririk?"

I shake my head. "L-later." I should. Probably get in the house-thing, though.

-----​

"Are you going to lie there all day?" the cat grumbles from somewhere by my left ear.

I curl tighter around my bedroll and try, and fail, to get some control over my breathing. "S-shut up." I just figured out everything's bad cause I might be made of two fake people, and telling myself it doesn't matter if the past is real doesn't make me believe it, and Dragons, Agatha might be right with wherever she gets sad thinking I came from, for all I fucking know, and I miss having tear ducts, and this cat is complaining at me!

"We're halfway through our wood already, you need to get up soon." I feel pressure on my side, that feels a lot like tiny feet, and the cat sighs. "Look, I haven't seen you eat all day. Do you want a mimmoth or something? Would that make you feel better?"

I open an eye to glare at him, which doesn't work very well since he's still mostly behind me. "W-what's a damned m-mimmoth."

A tiny furry something flies past my face and lands on the wood floor with a clack of its… horns. And it's a tiny brown mammoth. And a memory I forgot I had clicks in my head, and I suddenly know where the hell I recognize the name Beedle from.

"Krosp-kiv," I say urgently, staring at the cartoon monster in front of me. "Y-you were on an airship. With a–Gil-something."

"Gilgamesh Wulfenback, he was chasing us," Krosp-person answers, still right in my ear, and then he pushes off me to jump in front of me and look into my eyes. "Tell me how you know that."

"Wulfenbach." My tail twitches, and I laugh, and I'm not really happy, but everything's starting to make sense. "I'm just as r-real as you!"

Krosp-person, the sidekick Agatha Heterodyne picked up on the flying castle-thing, walks closer, and he's definitely glaring at me now. "Charririk, what the hell are you talking about."

"I w-wrote me, in a game, but I read you in a book!" I laugh again, except this time it's not just unhappy, it's definitely a sob, and I'm shivering enough my tail's smacking the floor. I squeeze my eyes back shut. "G-give me the fucking rat, I'm n-not okay, maybe it'll help."

The cat makes a sound I don't know how to describe, and something slides across the floor, and something soft and fuzzy hits me in the chin. I grab it with my mouth, squeeze it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue to crush it and break the horn-things off so I can drop those back onto the floor, and I shift it around to the side of my mouth so I can start biting it into smaller pieces with my cutting-teeth, and I snort, because this thing tastes really good, fresh blood, a surprising amount of fat, and human-me would absolutely hate everything about this.

'Thanks,' I try to say around my mouthful of cartoon pest, but it comes out more like "Nnk."

"Don't talk with your mouth full," Krosp-person tells me, and he's back to sounding annoyed instead of whatever Bahamut-damned emotion there was before, I don't fucking know.

I swallow half of the sliced-up bits of mimmoth and shove the rest behind my teeth so I can tell him, "There's plenty of room," and it's not really funny, and I think I just drooled blood and insides-goo onto the floor, and at least cleaning it won't be hard with my Wishcraft.

Krosp-person sighs. "Yes, of course, that makes everything better."

"Shut up."

"...Feel better soon, you're too useful for this," Krosp-kiv says, like the cat he is. At least I'm not allergic anymore. "I'm going up front."

"Mh." I hug my bedroll tighter (not much tighter, my arms are like noodles with how soulburnt I am) and yeah I think I was hungry, cause I still feel terrible, but not as much. Maybe I should eat more than once a day, there's humans all around, they'll have enough food for it anyway.

-----​

Feeling a little like I should not actually include the origin-appropriate memories of the first chunk of Girl Genius from this Charririk-and-me amalgamation, but it's what I intended from the start on this (though I hadn't decided how she'd get her memories together, since at this point, human-me hadn't read further than the escape from Castle Wulfenbach and knew anything else only from internet osmosis, wikis, and fanfic), so. I dunno. I guess if I do decide to change it, I can Apocrypha this and rewrite.

Feeling like my character's maybe having too many problems. But there is a lot wrong, and I think running into yet another "I'm fake!" situation would suck, so. Anyway, as usual, I basically don't know what I'm doing. Also looking forwards to writing Magibabble vs Technobabble when Agatha and Charririk both have time and are both functional at the same time (so, maybe, like, the next damn day, I dunno), on another topic, and also I'm rambling, so I'll just hit 'post'.

E: Accidental Draconic in internal monologue. Fixed it.

 

[FormlessAlien]

I pull myself out the front door, squinting because day's still way too bright, and get myself close enough to Agatha that I don't need to be loud to talk over the mechanics of the house-clank-chicken-thing's legs, which means basically right beside her ear, and I say, "You being a Heterodyne's a secret, right?"

Agatha flinches, and the mech-clank-house-thing stutters in its walking enough that if I was standing on it I think I might fall over. "My being–What makes you think–" Her eyes snap to me, and then to Krosp-person.

"I told you she knew we escaped Castle Wulfenbach, Agatha," he says cat-ish-ly.

"But that doesn't mean–!"

"I'm right here, and you're not being very convincing," I interrupt. "I'm just… gonna assume I shouldn't talk about it."

"Well, good!" Agatha sort of whisper-squeaks with very wide eyes as she starts walking the house-mech-clank-thing smoothly again. "You shouldn't!"

My tail flicks behind me, and I put a smirk on my face. "...Anyway, the fuel runs out in like three minutes if the burn-rate's linear, so I'm gonna go take some bits off a tree and refuel in-transit so we don't have to stop again," I tell her, feeling very amused. "Also, I can drive after that if you want."

"Oh." Agatha looks at me again, and her expression shifts. "You're feeling better, then?"

I nod, waving my tail. "Much. I convinced my heart that I'm real again, and also not being hungry helps!"

"That's good," the human says, and the look on her face settles on a tired smile. "And even though Baba Yaga's handling a lot better than I expected, I'd be glad to get off the sticks."

"I'll be back in a bit, then," I say, and I lift myself off and towards another tree.

Chopping parts off this one goes quicker, since I know how much I need and I don't have to bother actually cutting the tree down to get it, and I have the furnace full again in probably five minutes. I don't even run into any more existential landmines in my brain by the time I'm grabbing the control levers from Agatha!

Driving the chicken-clank-mech-thing's easy, like it was last time. It's easier, actually, but the road's different now, maybe that's it, human-me knows well enough how much worse driving on gravel is from driving on good pavement, but… Hmm. I pause, toggle the clutch, and twist my ankle again, and, no, that definitely happened faster than it did on the last step, which is… concerning.

"Uh, did the pressure just shift, or something?" I call back into the wagon.

Something thumps. "No, the pressure's the same! I'm just adjusting the gearing!"

I nod, and turn back around so I can see where I'm driving, and–Wait. "You're adjusting the thing I'm driving while I'm driving it? Is that–You're inside it, if it trips, you might get hurt!"

"I know what I'm doing, it's fine!"

"That–I–" I look at the road in front of me, and it's still clear for a bit, so I turn away and carry myself inside to see what–Dragons below! "You are inside of a gear-thingy that's taller than you are and can move a five-ton machine! That is insane! Who are you, me from a week ago?"

Agatha turns around and smiles the very very wide smile from when I met her at me. "Oh, you're here, that's convenient!" she says cheerfully, and she points a grease-covered arm at an immense pair of metal jaws on a handle. "Would you hand me that wrench?"

I stop halfway through carrying myself over to it and blink and shake my head, because I shouldn't even consider joining in. "...I'm driving! Wait until we get to wherever we're stopping!"

"I might not have time by then! And aren't you driving well enough from there? Just give me the wrench and get over here! Drive from two meters further!"

I… I could handle a few more split-minds, I technically have the architecture for eleven, I'm only running six, and I'm the ultimate multitool. I glance back at the–Shit, why do I keep considering–"I need to see the road to not crash, Agatha!"

"Use a mirror! Your sword looked polished enough!" The human drops down into the hatch she opened in the floor again, and would that actually–? "And I do need that wrench!"

I snap my fingers and my sword drops into my mostly-passive magic, and it barely fits in the house-thing but it does fit, and I flick my fingers to shift its angle, and I… can see outside okay, it's only a little bit blurry, and the diffusion dulls the brightness some so I won't even have to squint, and that's good enough, so I drop myself out of my magic to open up capacity, wave my hand to wrap that magic around the wrench, walk over to the edge of the hatch, and position my sword so I can see down the hole and out the front of the house-thing at the same time. "Here!" I call down, and I lower the wrench down into Agatha's open hand.

"Thanks!" She puts the giant wrench's jaws around an also-giant bolt head and turns it a bit, and my right knee, which was a little bit slower than my left, gets a little more responsive. "The control linkage here, it's not secured properly. Grab the death ray from the chest, the little one, turn the dial all the way down, and fix it!"

"Yes!" I say, and I flick my fingers to gather threads for–no, I can help Her better– "Wait, no, there's no need, I have enough power for that!" I pull the threads I gathered into a pair of not-there fragmented-end spikes I figured out for the third time we had to build walls around the Camp, flick the controls to see how the linkage needs to move when I'm done, ignore the lurching in the floor under me, wrap the spikes around-into-through the failing connection-point, Will the two sides to touch, and smash it back together so many times across the entire depth so quickly it takes three of my split-mids to control.

Agatha's eyes, which I hadn't noticed were back on me, get wider. "Interesting! You've forced the components together mechanically! How large a scale can you do that on?"

"It would be a function of time to do bigger things!" I report, tail wagging gleefully behind me. "That's my known safe output per second per volume!"

"And could you use that technique to cold-shape large volumes of steel, do you think?"

"Given enough time, in theory, absolutely! My effect on the world is limited per-time by the surface area and connection-quality of my soul, but actions on my scale couldn't significantly deplete the Weave even if it weren't externally supported!"

Agatha's eyes get deeper, and brighter, and She laughs. "Yes! This is perfect! We can turn this trash-heap into a MASTERWORK!"

"Yes, Mistress!" I agree in my egg-language. "Of course! Where do you want me!

Mistress Agatha points her wrench-holding hand to the sky above the roof. "I! Did not understand that!" She shouts to the world. "But it matters not! Onwards! To SCIENCE!"

-----​

"We have run out of fuel!" Mistress Agatha says in her wonderful voice. "Fetch us more!"

"Of course, Maekrix!"

I yank myself up through the floor and out over the porch-thing, and conveniently enough we're right in the middle of a bunch of trees right now! I snap my fingers to call my sword again, and I cut halfway through one of the trees, and I smack the top part to break it off away from Mistress Agatha, grab a pile of the splinters that exploded towards me with a sheet of motion-magic, and shove those into the feed-hopper, and the furnace lights up, and I bring up a foot now that I have the strength again and use my weight to smash that chunk of tree into fragments, and that is so much faster, and I crush the rest of the tree with three more stomps and then kneel down so the feed-hopper's closer to all the mashed fragments of tree so I can shovel them in faster, and the furnace burns brighter, and I can almost feel myself getting stronger.

"Fuel gathered!" I call back into the house-thing.

"Fantastic! Get us moving again!"

"Of course!" I drop into a crouch, digging my claws into the forest floor, and turn to–uh. I… I blink. There's trees… everywhere. "...Where were we going, Agatha? Cause I think the middle of a forest wasn't it?"

"The middle of–!" A thump comes from inside the house-thing, and then a few seconds later, Agatha walks out the house-thing's front door, frowning, and glares around at the world in general, and she blinks, and her frown shifts. "Weren't we… Where's the circus?"

"...Uh." Right, we were driving at the back of a caravan, on a road, and there were trees around, but–"...I'm gonna go check," I say, and I lift myself up (much higher than I did to look around before I found the road for the first time, I learned my lesson) and shade my eyes with a hand, and it's not hard to pick out all the carts, they're not even that far away, and I drop back down and grab my controls again. "Thhhat way," I say, pointing like a quarter-circle off from the direction the… trail of broken trees. "Did I… walk us here?"

"I imagine so," Agatha says, and she doesn't sound sure at all. "We're supposed to be on the road, though."

"Yeah, I had a pretty good view of things in the reflection on my swoooord that I just re-called and I don't remember when I dropped it!" I don't remember very much at all, actually! The last… I-don't-know-how-long feels like a blur, and that is kind of scary and I should make sure I'm not bloody anywhere and I swing my tail in a deliberate and I'm sure very fake-looking wag through the sudden shivering. "O-kay! I'll drive us back to the circus now, and we'll not do whatever it is we just did ever again!"

"Oh, good, you've finally come to your senses," the familiar voice of a familiar cat that I think I might've ignored while I was doing whatever-it-was forcing chunks of metal from one shape into another and ultrasonic-welding things together says, and Krosp-person walks out the door onto the porch-thing where Agatha's already standing. His fur looks… fluffy, or maybe messy, probably messy, and he looks unhappy, but he always does. "I was afraid you might eventually run into something you couldn't simply bowl over first."

I am. Not dealing with this right now.

"Get back in the house-thing we're leaving now!" I say I stand up, spin around at a reasonable speed so the two people standing on my front-porch won't fall off, set myself generally over the front of the roof where I can see where I'm going, and start walking towards where I saw the wagons, and the trees feel like stalks of corn under my feet, and "What did we do, Agatha, and can you teach me how to do it without entirely losing my awareness of myself and everything around me, because this feels amazing!"

"We rebuilt the entire power-train from the ground up while it was running," the human says in a tone that sounds a little like the kind of terrified amazement I'm feeling right now, except with a lot more proud in it, which. Yeah, that's earned probably. She must've been running the show, considering I have absolutely no idea how any remotely complex parts of this clank-thing work.

"Yes, yes, Charririk is far too capable of a minion, and–"

"I'm a what? No, I'm–I'm–" I'm a person who acts on the will of a more knowledgeable leader to accomplish mad science, which "–fuck, I am a–no, I'm at least a machine-shop–wait, that's worse that's a thing, I–"

"Minion is a respectable position!" Agatha says from inside the house-part of the chicken-house-clank-mech-thing, and I take a breath to yell back something or other negative, and then I remember that was… actually her whole job before the start of the story, wasn't it, she just worked for the Doctor Beedle guy, or maybe she was a student, and, okay, that sounds good enough, and I kick down another tree that might've hit the house-part and scuffed it again, and maybe I should focus on driving.

-----​

It continueth. I think maybe I went a bit hard on the yelling, but it's probably okay enough. Also I need to get out of the travelling part of this day, next section ideally, I think there's been enough of it.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Information​

Information
Listen to the mission instructions from a safe distance​

The words in the corner of the world have the right idea. Xion can hear Saïx well enough from over here.

"Roxas," Saïx is saying, "you will be teamed with Xion again today. You will be eliminating Heartless known as Deserters in Twilight Town." He holds out a stack of floppy flat things

papers​

papers. "This is the intel we have on them. I will open a Corridor when you're prepared."

Roxas nods, and he takes the papers and starts reading them. Even though he just started, Xion wants him to go faster, incase Saïx gets angry again, but she doesn't wanna get Saïx's attention either, so she just stays quiet and holds her weapon tighter.

"...Okay, I'm ready," Roxas says, and he stuffs the papers into a pocket.

Not much longer.​

"Very well." Saïx turns and waves a hand, and a portal thing appears in a woosh of blackness. "Do your job."

Xion doesn't need the words to tell her what to do. She pushes off the wall and walks over to the portal thing as fast as she can, keeping her eyes on Saïx and her weapon ready to catch an attack, and she steps through the portal thing into the colorful place before he does anything.

You're safe, Xion.​

The words are right. There's only Heartless here. Those are easy. And breathing doesn't feel so hard anymore.

Roxas comes through the portal thing after not very long, and his eyes look wider than they did before. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Xion says. "I'm safe now."

"...Okay," Roxas says, but he still doesn't look really happy. He looks down at her hands, at her weapon. "You have the Keyblade too?"

Xion nods, and her lips turn down from the smile she didn't realize she had before. "It appeared." She wishes it did earlier. She wishes Saïx didn't get angry about it not appearing. But it did appear.

You're okay.​

She is. She's a lot better now. And she has her weapon, and the words.

Roxas looks down at his own hand, and his weapon appears in it with a flash. "We should do the mission," he says.

Xion nods and looks expectantly at the corner of the world.

Information
Follow Roxas's lead​

The words are nice, telling her what to do even when she already knows.

-----​

Xion thinks it's a lot easier to fight with her weapon and magic than it was with a stick and magic, and it wasn't very hard even then.

She steps to the side as another Deserter tries to jump on her, and catches its neck with the teeth of her weapon so she can spin around behind it and hold it in place, and she shouts "Fire!" and warm power flares around her to burn it so much more easily than when she didn't have her weapon, and she ducks and pulls down to put the Heartless in the way of another one

Last one!​

that's running at her, and she twists her weapon to get its teeth out of the way and kicks the scorched close Heartless into the one that ran into it, and she swings her weapon down from where it settled up high and smashes through both of them, and they both explode into pink hearts.

"That was faster than the Poison Plant," Roxas says.

Xion nods and straightens up. "You got better," she tells him. She didn't have to push him out of the way of anything, this time.

Roxas smiles. "Thanks. So did you."

No, she didn't. She just got her weapon back.

You did get better. You're more used to your shape and speed now!​

...If the words say so. Xion decides to just nod, cause it does feel nice to hear and read.

"Also, I've got some place to be again, today, so--" Xion remembers, very suddenly, that being done with the mission means she has to go back to the castle, where Saïx is, and she feels cold "--go on ahead without... What's wrong?"

Do you... have to go back right away?​

Xion doesn't know either. "Do I... have to go back?" she asks Roxas hopefully.

"Not right away," he says, and his eyebrows scrunch up. "And... everything went well, so I... guess you've earned the icing on the cake."

"...Huh?" Xion glances at the words.

It sounds like a weird saying.​

Well, the words know more than she does, but not much, and it doesn't really matter. She looks back at Roxas, and he's smiling again.

"Come on, I'll show you," he says, and his weapon disappears in a flash, and he turns to walk down one of the paths Xion hasn't been on yet.

Information
Follow Roxas, and don't RTC yet!​

Xion's very glad to do that.

-----​

Xion sits down on the edge of the tower and stares down at all the colors and shapes below her. "How'd you find this place?" she asks Roxas excitedly. "It's great!"

"Here," he says, which isn't an answer. Xion looks over, and he's holding a blue... thing, on a stick, out to her.

That's an ice cream bar.​

Xion reaches out and takes the ice cream bar by the stick, because she thinks she's supposed to. "How, though?" she asks again.

"Axel took me here on my first day in the Organization," he says. "And then, after my first mission, he brought me here again, and got me ice cream again. Said it was 'icing on the cake.'"

So that's what that means.​

Xion nods and looks down at all the colors spread out below her again. "Thanks for showing it to me," she says. "What do I do with the ice cream, though?"

You eat–You haven't eaten anything before, have you?​

Xion shakes her head a little. She hasn't, and she's not… that sure what eating is, either.

"You bite it," Roxas says. Xion looks over at him, and watches as he brings the ice cream bar to his mouth and closes his teeth on it. "Like that."

"Okay." Xion looks at her own ice cream bar and copies what Roxas did, and it… tastes. A lot. She doesn't have the words.

It's salty… and sweet?​

"I like it," Xion decides. She should eat things more often!

"Sea salt ice cream," Roxas says. "It's Axel's favorite flavor."

"There's… flavors?" Xion should definitely eat more often!

"The ice cream stand has five, but this one's the best," Roxas says, confidently enough that Xion thinks he has to be right.

You should try chocolate some time, but this is good.​

Xion nods, and says, "How do you get ice cream?" because she wants to try all the flavors.

"You go to the ice cream stand, and you tell the person there what you want, and then you give them money, and they give you ice cream," Roxas says. "It's not that hard once you get used to it.

Xion makes a noise. She guesses she'll have to see if he's right when she actually tries that, because she doesn't know what money is, and that seems important. And does she just tell the person at the ice cream stand what kind of ice cream she wants, or does she talk about how she wants to never go back to the castle, or–?

I can walk you through it. Right now, you should eat your ice cream before it melts.​

…Melts? Xiom's hand loosens on the handle of her weapon, and she looks closer at her ice cream. There are bits of it sliding down the sides. Will it… turn into water if she takes too long? Or fall off the stick? That doesn't sound good! Then she won't have ice cream! She hurries to take another bite.

-----​

When Xion finally walks through the portal thing back into the gray place, she makes sure to have her weapon held in front of her, so she'll have a chance to block if Saïx notices her, but he barely looks up from his papers, and she has to hold back a sigh so he won't hear her.

Information
Get out of the gray place without alerting Saïx!​

Xion nods and starts walking around the edge of the room as quietly as she can, but she can't stop her shoes from clacking every time she sets her heel down. She makes sure to keep her back to the big windows, in case she messes up.

"Xion?" Roxas says far too loudly as he finally comes through the portal thing. "What are–"

Xion shakes her head urgently, eyes wide. "Quiet!" she whispers.

Roxas frowns, and the way he looks back and forth between Xion and Saïx makes her think he's confused, but he does stop talking. Xion goes back to trying to sneak around the edge of the room.

"Congratulations on your first mission, Xion," Saïx says, still looking at his papers. Xion freezes. He knows she's here! She brings her weapon higher, there's nobody else here this time, maybe she could win against just him even with how slow she is–

Information
Run!​

That's a better idea. Xion runs.

"You will need to fill out a report–" she hears Saïx say before she gets around the third corner and he's too quiet to understand, but she doesn't stop until she's gone around six. Her blood's rushing so fast it feels like it's going to burst out through her skin, and she's cold, and she never wants to see Saïx again.

And she has to get another mission from him tomorrow.

Xion looks over at the words.

He isn't following. I think.​

That's not what she wanted an answer for, but that's good. Now, she just has to get her blood to slow down, and get to her room, and figure out how she's going to deal with tomorrow. She leans back against the wall, does her best to take a few deep breaths, and looks around.

At… colorless walls. That look like every other colorless wall in the castle. She… doesn't know where she is.

I don't know where we are either.​

…That's not good.

No, it isn't. But you'll be okay.​

Xion hopes so… Right now, she guesses she needs to start… looking around.

Information
Search for your room!​

The words agree. At least there's nobody else here to be angry at her. She turns, pushes off the wall so she can lean with her arm instead of her shoulder, and starts walking.

----------​

Posting this on mobile, and I think it dropped my italics. I'll fix it once I'm not AFK anymore.

E: Yeah, that was a mobile issue. Copypasting from Google Docs preserves a lot more formatting than I expected, it turns out. More than I planned for. I'll need to change how I'm formatting things in the future. Anyway, here we have... not too much exciting happening, I think. Xion gets to not be in the same room as Saix, does a fighting thing which is easy because she was made for fighting, experiences eating something by eating ice cream, sees the view from the clock tower, runs away from Saix being an asshole on purpose, and gets lost. (Also I feel like I've kind of lost the voice I had for Xion in the first section... I need to figure out why I feel that way and fix it.)

 

[Lorddarkrai2]

Information
Search for your room!​

Click to shrink...

she got lost? I wonder what she'll find in her wanderings

 

[FormlessAlien]

The first thing Adena notices is that she's moving. That's not… so odd, really, she's woken up in Kriegsmesser's car after being almost killed before, but there's a distinct lack of medical robot bits stuck to her, and she's pretty sure from the smell that she's still covered in blood.

Also, there's definitely arms carrying her, which isn't something the medicine robot does.

Since Adena doesn't really know anyone who likes carrying her around like this, or anyone who's strong enough to try in the first place, she decides it's in her best interest to not let whoever it is know that she's awake. So, behind her thermo-whatever glasses that she's glad she's still wearing, Adena carefully opens her eyes.

The first thing she notices is that the person carrying her is very warm. Like, the redder kind of dark infra-red, the kind that's more red than a metahuman and maybe about as red as that hot tub that one time. The second thing she notices is that the person carrying her looks very not metahuman.

Adena stops breathing so she doesn't gasp.

The person carrying her has colder fur all over, and a snout, and long, floppy-looking ears. Adena doesn't think she's ever seen anything like them, but at least with the bit of their expression she can see, they don't look like they want to kill her… Adena decides to take a risk.

"…Hello?" she says. It comes out quieter and scratchier than she intended, and it suddenly occurs to her that she's feeling very thirsty.

Then the person's weird looking head turns to look at Adena's face, and she thinks their face looks something between surprised and relieved. "You are awake!" they say in a big voice that sounds about the same way their expression looks. "When I found you, you were incredibly hurt, and when you did not wake after I healed you—ah, do you feel well enough to stand?"

"Yeah," Adena tells the apparently-friendly floppy-eared person. "I don't think there's anything wrong with me besides blood loss, since nothing really hurts." Alexa, is there?

'Your biomonitor reports no remaining wounds, and no non-chronic medical issues apart from the aftereffects of losing approximately a sixth of your blood,' Alexa's blue circle says. 'The healing effect you experienced fourteen minutes ago closed the holes in your lungs quite effectively.'

Adena nods to herself and thinks the pictures Alexa brought up away. "Yup, just blood loss, so I'll be throw-up-y until I can fix that, but I would still like to be on my feet, please?"

The floppy ears person's face flashes angry, then sad, and then they push it back into a calm smile. "Of course, my child," they say, and they crouch down and set Adena on the ground and wow they're tall she notices now that she's on the ground.

"Thanks," Adena says, and then she gets her feet properly under her and takes an experimental step, and the world sways in that way it does when she's fresh out of a fight or maybe a bad surgery, and she feels somewhat more generally awful, and she frowns and looks back up at the floppy ears person's face. "Uh, can I hold onto your sleeve, actually? Cause apparently a sixth of my blood is more than I thought."

They reach out one of their hands palm-up towards Adena. "You may hold my hand, if you wish, my child."

Adena nods. "Okay, uh." And she looks down at her hands, with their really big and really sharp claws, and she very deliberately pulls herself away from the designs engraved across her arms, and all the little glowy lines go dark, and then she reaches out and carefully wraps the (unsharpened) first two segments of her fingers around the floppy-ear-person's one big hand, and then she triggers her skimmers with a thought and is very glad she has a good hold on their hand cause her balance is shot. "Just… get me to somewhere that has water? Or juice? Please?"

"I have both at my home," the floppy ears person says, and they star walking again, pulling Adena along behind them. "It is not much further now."

"That's good." Adena tugs at her jacket with the knuckles of her free hand. It's… wet. That's where the sixth of her blood went, she guesses… It feels as gross as being covered in blood always does. She should fix it. And with the floppy ears person— "Um, what do I call you, actually?" she asks, cause she should probably think of them by a name.

"I am Toriel," they say in their big, gentle voice, and their name sounds as nice as they do. "What is your name?"

"Adena," Adena says back a little bit distractedly as she carefully pulls off her glasses and hooks them on her shirt so she can actually see what she's doing. Then she takes a breath and pulls on the magic in her soul. "And left the lands clean," she incants as she twists the magic into her spell.

Shining silver power spins out of Adena's skin in the shape of a million tiny hounds that charge through her clothes and across the ground around her and take all the sticky blood that was stuck to her skin with them.

"That's better!" Adena chirps, smiling. Then she looks back at Toriel, she sees that there's something sad behind their smile, and her own smile dims. "What's wrong?"

"My children's eyes were red," they say, and Adena doesn't really get why—

Oh.

Toriel said 'were.'

Adena's smile dies the sort of death she usually dishes out, and she looks away. "I'm sorry." She shuffles her feet, and she watches as the skimmers at her toes scatter the leaves. "I could… put my glasses back on, if you'd like…?"

"No, please don't trouble yourself," Toriel says quietly. "This is not your fault, nor is it your demon to fight."

Adena doesn't really know what to say to that, so she just says "Okay."

A bit of quiet, subdued walking later, Adena decides she should check the astral to make sure there aren't any nasty surprises (well, she realizes she should have checked a lot earlier, but she thinks she has a good excuse for why she didn't think to), and she draws out her soul and pulls it through her eyes, and normal colors fall away beneath a river of stale loneliness, bitter acceptance, and peace. The air is dense, and full of what looks like old strength. Beings Adena doesn't recognize by their shape move shyly between the bushes, shining with life.

And something greyish red in the vague shape of a metahuman is quietly following Adena's trail.

"There's something following us," she says, and she shifts her grip on Toriel's hand to spin herself around so she can get a good look at the grey thing.

"Oh, there are plenty of other Monsters in the Ruins—"

Adena's soul flickers out towards the grey thing, which is starting to shrink back away, and she stares into the eyes she can see in their head now. They're very hurt. Now that Adena is close, she can see that they aren't an indistinct shape, they're a soul, torn into scraps and broken apart and missing most of their heart, held together only by the lingering remnants of an impossibly strong Will made of red like blood.

Floating within the nearly-dead soul, tied in by threads of crimson Will, are chunks of magic that try to fill in the gaps in the soul's ribcage and take the place of retinas in the soul's shredded eyes. The magic is dyed dull red by the threads of Will where it fills in the soul's missing organs, and in their eyes, it burns like empty fire.

Happiness and hope are even duller in the soul's torn heart than they are in the aura resting on the land, and old flickers of despair are joined by a fresh spike of terror as they look down at Adena's hand wrapped around their arm—

Adena has her hand wrapped around the detached soul's arm. When did that happen?

Adena blinks and shakes her head clear. "Hello?" she says to the second strange person today. "Can you understand me?"

The soul nods frantically and opens their mouth. Nothing comes out.

Adena nods back and puts on her best friendly smile. "A third of your left lung and most of your throat are missing at the moment," the soul looks down at its front, and its eyes get even wider, "so talking like you did when you were alive isn't gonna work, but I'm glad you understand me!"

"Who… are you talking to, child?" Toriel asks, sounding concerned, and Adena looks back at them, and wow, Toriel looks like a housefire on the astral, and also confused and concerned.

"They look like a really determined person's soul, and they seem pretty old, so I thought it might be nice for them to talk to someone, but they were afraid of me probably because I grabbed them with my claws, but I'm really good about not hurting people when I don't mean to, so you don't need to worry, and can you astrally perceive, because if you can, you could maybe use your healing magic to help? I don't really know any of that."

「Do you… ever breathe…?」someone says from behind her in a voice that sounds like Willpower, and Adena turns back to the soul and her smile gets a bit easier.

"I can literally hold my breath for an hour, so not when I don't want to!" she answers. "Mom says I ramble sometimes, though, if that's what you mean, and I'm glad you figured out how to talk!"

「It wasn't… that hard…」they say, a nervous smirk on the half-there patchwork of their face, at the same time Toriel says "What do you mean by 'astrally perceive?'"

"It's how you see the sort of… second side of the world, where magic and thoughts and emotions and stuff are," Adena says over her shoulder. "Souls usually don't live in it, or at least metahuman souls don't, we're tied up in our bodies, but there's a trick where you can kind of push yourself more outside so you can see and touch stuff that's on the astral as well as on the meat, and I could try and teach you, if you want, but that could take anywhere from hours to months depending on how tied up your magic already is." And then something occurs to her and she blinks. "Unless you already know how to perceive and you just didn't know the name?"

There's a weird expression on Toriel's face now, and the confusion inside them is getting brighter. "Ah, no? I do not know of anything like… that?" they say.

"Okay," Adena says back, and then she turns back to the soul, whose smirk has turned into more of a wistful smile. "Um, do you have a way to make a body in meatspace like spirits do? Or maybe a body to go back to?" she asks. "Because I have a medkit that I could use on you, if you were non-ghosty."

The soul grimaces.「My body's probably rotted to dust by now, and I don't think I've ever seen a spirit that wasn't just some Monster, so that's a no,」they say. Then they look down at themselves again and poke at one of their exposed ribs.「Also, didn't you say my lung was missing or something? Because I'm not sure that's something a first aid kit could fix.」

"Ah," Adena says, feeling stupid. "You have a point, soul person. I definitely don't have a spare lung in there… but Mom probably does. And she knows how to heal!" Um, Alexa, can you call Mom?

'We do not have any Matrix connection at the moment, so I cannot,' Alexa says, and Adena frowns.

"Uh, but that'll have to wait until I can get Matrix so I can call her," she says, "and also there's still the materialization problem," and then she blinks and the world's not quite in the same place it was before she did, "but maybe we should do that later cause I really do need to drink something and eat something so I can stop not having enough blood, um, Toriel, can the soul person come with us to wherever we were going?"

"Um, of course!" Toriel says, and their weird expression turns into kind of a smile as golden happiness and flowing care and heavy concern intensify around them. They hold out a hand. "Would you like to hold my hand again?"

Adena blinks. "…Wow, I'm really out of it, I forgot I let go, sure!" And then she lifts her right arm off the ground where she was using it to hold herself up, extends it from a little long to as long as it can go, and carefully grabs Toriel's hand again, and then she retracts her arm to pull herself over, and then she remembers that she's still holding the ghost person with her left, and she looks back and says, "Uh, sorry," and lets go.

「It's, uh, fine,」they mutter. They don't look fine, though, with the way their emotions are sinking and twisting inside them.

"I don't think you have anything to be guilty about," Adena says, confused. "Like, I'm the one who grabbed you, and—"

「I don't wanna talk about it,」the ghost person interrupts kinda snappily, and wow that's a lot of not-fun that Adena can see, and then the ghost person looks away.｢…It's not you, don't worry, I, uh. Fuck.｣

"My child?" Toriel says from behind Adena, and the ghost person flickers very unpleasantly again.

Adena glances over her shoulder. "Ghost person's not feeling good, uh, sorry for the one-sided conversation thing," she says, and then she turns back to the ghost person who's definitely very not happy with all sorts of grey and rage and Adena holds out her free arm. "Would a hug help?"

The ghost person looks up from the ground, and their eyes don't look any happier than their aura. They open their arms. ｢…Please,｣ they say, and their voice sounds like all the Willpower in it was used to keep it steady.

Adena reaches out and wraps her arm around the ghost person and pulls them against her. They feel cold and sad against Adena's soul. Then Adena remembers, again, that she's missing a lot of her blood, when she notices she's shivering. "Are you alright with going to Toriel's house now, cause I really need more fluids or I'll probably pass out in a half hour," Adena whispers awkwardly to the ghost person in her arm.

"Oh, we are going," Toriel says in a very unhappy and very concerned tone, which means Adena didn't whisper quietly enough, and then they start walking, and Adena has to get her not-very-working brain to adjust to things moving again. "Perhaps I should pick you up again. I have it on good authority that 'passing out' is a sign of illness in humans, and I will not have you neglecting your health."

The ghost person sighs, and more of that kind-of-nostalgia not-quite-happiness from when they looked wistful earlier comes back. ｢I guess that's a yes. Hope you like snails…｣

Adena doesn't know what snails have to do with juice, but she guesses she'll find out. Or something.

----------​

Another thing I wanna write more of, and just got done stitching together from incomplete pieces. I'm sure someone's put somebody who's killed A Lot into the Underground before. Dunno if that somebody's been a magician (or was it mystic adept? Eh, this is a story, I don't need to worry about game mechanics) with all four cyberlimbs and just about one Essence left, though.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Adena manages to not get much worse while Toriel takes her the rest of the way to their house (though the folding spike… thing did make her think she was seeing things for a bit), and the house seems… weird, and big, and everything here doesn't have any arrows, but that doesn't matter, cause Adena's in the kitchen leaning on the counter with a big cup of some kind of blue thing Toriel gave her, and it tastes really good.

"Is this enough, my child?" Toriel asks, looking very concerned-ed-ly down at her. "Do you need anything else?"

Adena holds up a finger for Toriel to wait, finishes drinking the whole cup of whatever-juice, sets the cup in the sink, and smiles up at her. Not being thirsty helps a lot. "I should be okay now, if you give me, uh, a few hours, probably? Mostly? I don't have as many, uh–" Adena tries to remember how Mom says it, cause she actually knows the words for things, but she can't, so she just says "–not-important places for my body to take blood from, cause–" she waves the arm she's not leaning on "–these, so I don't get better as fast, or deal with missing blood as well as other people, but I've had worse."

Toriel nods, but there's still a lot of concern sitting inside them, even with a smile back on their long face. "Shall we move to the living room so you can sit down, then? Until you feel better?"

Well, walking's still a problem, so that's a good idea. Adena nods. "Yeah, uh," she looks at the sink, and the big cup in it, "lemme just get some water in case I get thirsty again."

"Of course." Toriel leans down and reaches a hand out. "Shall I…?"

"No, I've got it." Adena turns the sink on, grabs the cup, waits for the water to look cold, catches some of it in the cup, and turns the sink off.

｢You should fill that all the way,｣ the ghost person says, leaning on Adena's shoulder.

Adena looks over at them curiously. "Mm?"

｢So you don't have to come back and get more.｣ They wave a hand at the sink. ｢It's more efficient, and you can just pour out what you don't drink.｣

That… makes sense, Adena supposes. "Okay." She turns the sink back on and fills the cup up the rest of the way.

"Talking to the ghost again?" Toriel says in an odd tone of voice.

Adena turns back around to face them, holding her cup carefully so it won't spill. "Yeah, they said I should…" She blinks, and looks closer at Toriel's aura, and her smile shrinks a little. "…Why are you sad?" And why is there suspicion swimming around in their head? Adena doesn't think she's done anything suspicious, except having her real arms on, but she thought Toriel didn't care about those. She's running her SIN and keeping her devices unhidden and everything!

"Do not worry, Adena," Toriel says, still in that odd tone, and they hold out their hand. "Let us get you somewhere you can rest, for now."

"Okay." Adena carefully grabs Toriel's hand again, and keeps her skimmers off cause she doesn't wanna hurt the floors of their house if she doesn't have to, and she starts walking, using their arm for balance.

Whatever's wrong, it's either not Adena's business, or it's something that'll make Toriel attack her, and they have a lot of magic, Adena's sure she could still kill them easily enough if she had to–She blinks. Why is her hand wet? Did she spill–She definitely spilled, there's less water in her cup than there was a second ago. Maybe the ghost person's idea to fill up the cup wasn't such a good idea.

｢You gotta be more careful,｣ the ghost person says, from where they're still leaning on Adena's shoulder, and they sound amused. Like a jerk.

"Like to see you do better," she mutters, looking very deliberately at the cup and not at the soul.

"Here we are," Toriel says, and Adena looks up, and she's in the room with the fireplace. "Would you like to sit in the fluffy chair, my child?"

"Uh. Sure." She looks around the room again, bouncing a little on her feet cause doing that doesn't make her feel so throw-up-y now, and the other chairs are just solid wood, so it's definitely the best one. She walks over to the chair, doesn't spill her water, and sits down, and sighs. "This is nice."

"I am glad you think so." Toriel lets go of Adena's hand, steps back, and clasps her hands in front of her. "Will you be alright on your own, here, for a while? I would like to start making dinner."

Adena won't be on her own, there's a ghost that makes her spill water in here with her, but that doesn't matter. She nods. "I'll be fine."

Toriel nods back and takes a couple more steps towards the door. "I will be just in the next room. Call for me if you need anything, alright, small one?"

Now it's Adena's turn to feel suspicious, cause Toriel cares more than people usually do about her, and it's weird. She still says "Yeah," cause letting someone know you know something's wrong is a bad idea.

Toriel stands there for another couple seconds, looking at Adena, and there's more care flowing through them so either that's still real or they know how to mask auras and they're lying about not being able to look into the Astral, but that second one doesn't make much sense, and then Toriel turns away and walks back into the kitchen.

Everything's quiet, for a little while, except from some noises from the kitchen, which look like they're coming from the kitchen when Adena runs her radar scanner to check through the wall, so Adena has Alexa read something she can ignore to her, and she snuggles more into the chair.

"Do you prefer cinnamon or butterscotch?" Toriel says from the other room as Alexa's talking about the dwarves in the hobbit hole.

The ghost sighs, and mutters ｢She's making butts pie, isn't she,｣ quietly enough Adena thinks maybe and Adena wonders why they know stuff about Toriel, maybe they haunted her (she supposes) before Adena got here or something? But she can figure that out later.

"No idea!" Adena calls back. "I don't know what those are!"

"I… see," Toriel says, and her big voice sounds some kind of upset that Adena can't place without looking at her. Adena narrows her eyes and takes a sip of her water.

｢I told you getting more water was a good idea,｣ the ghost says smugly, and now they're leaning on Adena's head instead of her shoulder.

Adena tries to elbow the ghost off her with her free hand, but they move out of the way. "I've barely had any, and you made me spill!" she grumbles. "Also, get off me!"

The ghost person crawls forwards on Adena's head (at least they aren't heavy) and looks her right in the face with their own upside-down glowing eyes. ｢Make me.｣

Adena can do that. She reaches up, wraps her fingers gently around the soul's face, and extends her arm to push them into the air.

｢Wha– Hey!｣ they shout, twisting around to grab onto Adena's fingers and fail very badly at forcing them open. ｢Let go!｣

"You said to make you," Adena says smugly, smirking at their annoyed expression. "It's your fault you got where I could see you, anyway."

｢W-well, you're doing that… slinky-arm thing!｣ the ghost shouts back, glaring through Adena's fingers. ｢That's cheating!｣

"And you get to float, so it's totally fair!"

The ghost straightens out, entirely upside-down, and crosses their arms. ｢Hmmph. Well, I–｣

"No fighting in there, children!" Toriel says loudly from the kitchen.

｢Ugh!｣ The ghost rolls their eyes, and a weird combination of emotions flicker over their skin. ｢Fine!｣ they shout, like Toriel can hear them.

"I'm not a child, y'know," Adena grumbles, but she does let go of the ghost person's head and pull her arm back in. She already won, anyway.

The ghost spins themself right-side-up in the air and glares some more. ｢You're not, huh? You're certainly short enough to be one!｣

"I can still grab you," Adena threatens idly, reaching out and smiling just a little bit wide, and the ghost pulls back further towards the ceiling.

｢Slinky-arms,｣ they say again, and their glare's more of a pout, now.

Except for the blood loss earlier and the weirdness still happening, Adena's enjoying herself. The ghost doesn't look quite as torn apart as before, either… She leans back and drinks more of her water. How healthy am I? she asks Alexa with her thoughts.

Alexa stops talking about adventure things, and the stuff Adena doesn't know how to read in the corner of her vision gets replaced with pictures and graphs and things. 'You have regained enough of your blood volume for low pressure to no longer be a likely issue, but your blood cell count remains low. If you sleep successfully for the duration, complete recovery should take no more than six weeks without additional medical intervention.'

Adena sighs and looks up at the ceiling. Six to eight weeks. She's glad Mom has things for that. Fighting with bad blood sucks, and she can't afford to stay out of work for a month and a half. Which reminds her, when she's better enough, she needs to get home. And she has no idea where she is. Or… how she got here… The smile that made its way back onto her face earlier fades away.

"Hey, uh, where are we, actually?" she asks the ghost.

｢Home, in the Underground,｣ they say very unhelpfully.

"And the Underground is…?"

｢Under Mount Ebott,｣ the ghost clarifies. Adena still has no idea. She looks over at Alexa's blue circle.

'A mountain approximately seven kilometers to the East of your most recent run's objective,' she says, and the graphs and things change out to a map that Adena actually recognizes, which means she's still in very-northern UCAS. One splotch is highlighted yellow. 'I don't have sufficient information stored onboard to comment further without Matrix access.'

It's still more than Adena knew before, at least. "Thanks," she says out loud.

The ghost shrugs. ｢Not like it's a secret, or anything.｣ They float back towards the ground, and the colors and not-colors of their emotions shift into mostly curiosity with a heap of bad memories on top. ｢I take it you didn't jump, then?｣

"Thaaat sounds like you're talking about suicide," Adena says. "So, no, and I think–" she looks at Alexa's circle and pulls some files out to check, and a few pictures from her own eyes of muzzle flashes pointed at her appear "–Yeah, someone shot me a lot, and left me for dead, uh, wherever Toriel found me, and I'm not totally sure about that second part, but I have recordings of the shooting thing."

Something in the kitchen thumps, which means Toriel, who Adena forgot could be listening but of course she was. Adena pulses her radar sensor again, and Toriel (the not-dense thing that has limbs and stuff) looks like she's holding onto her knee, and not like she's doing anything Adena has to be worried about. "You okay?" she shouts, cause she shouldn't be able to know what happened with a wall in the way.

"I am fine, small one!" Toriel calls back in what Adena thinks is a pretty convincingly calm voice. "I simply stubbed my toe!"

"Okay!" Adena says, and she closes the pictures she pulled up with a thought. She hopes food's ready, soon (Toriel said she was gonna cook something, right?). Even though the combat stims that are always in her don't let her really get hungry, she hasn't eaten for, like, eight hours, plus however long she was unconscious, so she definitely should be.

The ghost stares at Adena for a while, sighs, and floats back over towards her. ｢...Can I lean on you again?｣

"Not on my head," she tells them. "Besides that, sure."

They nod, and settle back onto Adena's shoulder. ｢Thanks.｣

----------​

Some more of this! Not all too much exciting is happening yet. Lemme know what y'all think.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Xion still doesn't know where she is, and she's been walking for a while. At least she's feeling bored, instead of like she's in a fight she doesn't know she can win. She looks back and forth between another two utterly-the-same colorless hallways, sighs, and turns down the one on the left, since it doesn't make a difference.

She knocks her weapon against the wall and slides it along as she walks, so her footsteps won't be the only sound. It helps a little. She sighs.

The castle has to end somewhere…​

Even the words are getting unsure. This hall curves around, like a lot of them do, so Xion won't be able to see where she came from for much longer, not that that would help, and her weapon catches on something. She frowns.

That's weird.​

Very weird. Xion looks over at the wall, and it seems blank, but her weapon's teeth are definitely on something… She tugs on whatever it is, and it doesn't move, so she tries poking it with her hand. Whatever it is, it feels like metal, and it's round, and… she thinks maybe it's a door handle? One that she can't see. She tries to turn the handle, and something beeps, and then the handle slides to the side so fast it almost pulls her off her feet! And… now there's a hole, in the wall.

Well, this hall doesn't look the same as the others anymore.

Information
Investigate the mysterious room!​

Xion nods, and steps into the hole the door left when it tried to pull her over, holding her weapon out in front of her. It's dark, so she takes another couple steps to get all the way into the room and presses the button she knows is on the wall, and lights up above turn on with a buzz. She recognizes that buzz, she thinks. She looks up at where it's coming from, and…

Where has Xion seen that ceiling before? It looks so familiar, but she doesn't know from where, at all.

I don't think I've seen it before.​

Well, the first thing Xion remembers that the words in the corner of the world don't also remember is seeing the words for the first time, so that doesn't make any sense. Maybe she should keep investigating.

Xion looks away from the ceiling and steps over to the big shiny tubes along the walls. They have labels on them, on metal plates on the top.

'No. π, No. e, No. i…' These numbers don't make any sense.​

They're definitely not like any numbers Xion knows about. Though, she really doesn't know much about numbers at all… The words not knowing, though, is surprising. But they've been not knowing more things, the longer she's been awake, so maybe it shouldn't be so surprising.

No, I was never really that good at math, but 'e' and 'i' are definitely letters.​

And there's a whole lot more weird numbers on the metal plates, on a lot more tubes. Twenty, Xion counts. And there's something in them, but the windows they're made of are too dark for her to really tell what, except… Xion leans in closer to the one with 'No. e' on it, squinting, and she puts a hand up to block the light from above so she can see a little better, and now she's sure. Whatever's inside has arms, and legs, and a head, and no face.

People? Stuck in tubes?​

Not in all of them. 'No. i' looks empty, and so does 'No. τ' across from it. There's probably more things in the room to investigate, though, so Xion leans away from the tube she was looking at and starts walking around the room, looking around carefully. There's a… sort of box, with some handles on the front.

A filing cabinet.​

Xion nods at the new words. Seems kinda like a chest, so she should probably open it. She bonks the top of it with her weapon, just in case it's locked, and then she grabs the top handle and pulls.

Lots of files. It'd take a while to read all this.​

With how thick they are, and how it seems like they're full of papers, Xion definitely agrees. She tries flipping through the files and looking at the labels, but they don't really mean anything to her. Stuff about 'circulatory imitation' and 'memory anchor experiments' and 'biomimetic musculoskeletal design' and things. She grabs one of them and pulls it out, to see how many papers are actually inside it, and–Footsteps. There's footsteps coming from the hall outside.

Information
Take some files and get out before someone notices!​

Xion nods, squeezes together a bunch of files in the cabinet as well as she can without dropping her weapon, shuffles them under her arm, and kicks the cabinet shut as she stands up. She doesn't know why she needs to get out, but she trusts the words to know that sort of thing, so she rushes out to the hall, pulls the invisible handle to make the door start to close, and just runs.

Identify yourself, one of the wiggly–the Dusks says from somewhere behind her, and she runs faster. There has to be another turn soon, the halls aren't that long–There! She jumps left, swings her weapon to carry her a bit higher, and runs along the wall for a second to keep from losing speed, and she keeps going. There's another turn just ahead, only two ways to go, they look as much the same as everything, so thinking won't help, and she goes left again because she–Doors! She sees doors!

There's your room!​

Yes! Xion bounces off the wall, pulls her room's door open, and shuts the door after her as she rushes inside.

Information
Hide the files under the bed!​

She grabs the files out from under her arm and shoves them into the gap underneath her bed. Her blood's racing again, but it's a whole different sort of excitement than when she was running away earlier today. She did it! And that was sorta fun!

Good job, Xion! Now, we just wait until we hear the Dusk leave, and we're home free!​

Xion nods, smiling, and sits down on her bed. She rests her weapon across her knees and tries to slow her breathing back down so she can listen to what's happening outside better.

For a while, it's quiet, and the only thing Xion can hear is her own breathing. Then, something thumps, loud, and then there's quick footsteps, and those footsteps are getting quieter fast. She waits for a while longer, until she hasn't been able to hear the footsteps anymore for what feels like a long time, and then she flops back onto her bed, and something she'd been holding inside so she wouldn't make noise comes out of her mouth, and she doesn't know what it is, but it feels good.

That's laughter. You're laughing, Xion.​

Xion's laughing. She likes it! And she feels the most relaxed she has all day! If she didn't have to breathe, she might even try to laugh forever, but she does have to breathe, and also the laughter kind of… runs out, apart from that, and then she's lying there smiling up at the boring gray ceiling of her room…

Xion sighs, rolls over onto her side, and grabs the pillow from the top of her bed to set her head on. She thinks the words should do things like taking those files with her again. Running from Saïx before was…n't fun… Xion suddenly doesn't feel so happy anymore.

It'll be okay.​

If the words say so… He hasn't tried to hit her yet, and she might be able to block it if he does, or even win a fight against him if the other colors in the gray place don't help him, but she's not sure. And, with how fast she is, she'd definitely get hurt.

No, I–You could, you'd definitely win, but what I mean is, you won't be somewhere he can be mean to you forever.​

Xion rolls the rest of the way over, shifting her weapon so she won't be on top of it, and presses her face into her pillow. She doesn't see how that's possible.

We'll find a way. I promise.​

…If the words say so.

It's quiet, and the words don't change, for a little bit.

…Do you… wanna try reading some of the files you got?​

…Xion wants the words to tell her to.

If you want, Xion.
Information
Try reading the files​

Xion rolls over again, off the bed, taking her pillow with her, reaches underneath, and pulls whichever file's on top out towards her. 'Unanchored experiments,' its label says, which doesn't mean anything more than the others to Xion, so she just opens the front and grabs a paper from the middle somewhere to look at.

There's a lot of words.​

Lots of ones Xion doesn't know, too. It has the word 'Heart' a lot, though. That's the one for the pink things that come from the Heartless, she thinks? She doesn't know what it has to do with memories, or what a puppet is, or… anything else, really. There's a lot of words she doesn't know.

Yeah, we might need a dictionary to really read these…​

Dictionary?

It's a book that tells you what all the words mean.​

Xion nods. She can definitely see how that would be helpful for this. She also definitely doesn't have one. Maybe there's pictures, somewhere? She flips the paper around, and there's something that's sort of a picture with some lines that go up and down

a graph​

a graph, but there's not really any pictures. Maybe there's something on one of the other papers? Or in another file? She sets the first paper down, and starts shuffling through the others in the 'unanchored experiments' file.

There isn't anything for a whole lot of papers, but she does find something about a third of the way through. There's some pictures of a person without a face lying on a table, staring blankly up with blue eyes. There's some kind of tubes going into their right side, and they're wearing some kind of weird hat that makes Xion's head feel squeezed from looking at it.

It's labeled 'No. i Unanchored Activation Test XII.'​

So it has something to do with the first empty tube. She sets down the other papers and tries to read again.

"Sub-ject's eyes tracked fl… flower-escent tubes when moved," Xion sounds out. "Similar-ities to p-previous test pronounced, response increasing…" She shakes her head "That doesn't help."

It means something, but who knows what.​

Xion thinks maybe she should look for more pictures. Even when most of the words are ones she knows, things don't make sense, so until she has a dictionary, she doesn't think she'll be able to understand what anything but the pictures really mean.

The no-face person is kinda creepy, but having more pictures would definitely be good.​

Xion smiles. She didn't get creeped out by the picture at all, but the words in the corner of the world can think that if they want.

Aw, come on!​

----------​

More of this. Very very glad I figured out Google Docs preserves justification when copy-pasted here, woulda taken ages to get it back otherwise.

E: The copy-paste did drop fonts, because of course it did. Re-added the font for the Dusk talking.

E2: Rewrote Xion's comment on her first memories for continuity.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Xion doesn't want to go to the gray place. She doesn't want to do a mission. But she has to.

Until we have a way out. Also, right, here.​

Whenever that happens. Xion sighs. She swings her weapon beside her as she turns down another hallway, and her feet move slowly. The walls are gray and boring, and the floor's gray and boring, and there's a Dusk with that weird stick cleaning like there was yesterday. It's not the same hallway as they were in last time, she thinks, so the Dusk must be making progress.

"I hope you get your weapon soon," she tells them as she walks by.

Thank you, my liege, the Dusk says back in that soundless voice the people without faces have.

I'm not sure if Dusks have their own weapons?​

Xion's weapon came to her when she needed it. She's sure theirs will, too.

And even if it doesn't, I'm sure they have lots of friends, with how many Dusks there are, and those are a power all their own.​

Xion nods a little. She supposes having a dozen other people to help you fight would make things pretty easy, even if all you have are your hands and some spells.

That's… Well, I guess that's true, too.​

Xion's glad she got it right. She's getting better at understanding things.

Not much happens for the rest of the walk to the gray place, except for all the happiness draining out of Xion as she gets closer, and she's holding her weapon tight in a low guard when she finally walks in.

"Good, you're here," Saïx says as soon as Xion steps out of the hall, and Xion's eyes snap to look at him. He has papers in his hand again. "A giant Heartless has surfaced, which you will be exterminating as soon as Roxas arrives, but in the meantime, work on filling this–" he shakes the papers in his hand "–out."

Information
Carefully get the papers from Saïx​

Xion nods and squeezes her weapon tighter. She has to, and she'll have warning if he calls his weapon. She walks forwards carefully, keeping her eyes on Saïx's hands, grabs the papers with her free hand, and steps back as fast as she can to get out of his reach.

"Have the report filled out as soon as you can," he says, glaring at her, and it's not as bad as yesterday, but it's still scary, and she has to make herself keep moving away.

"I will," she says quickly so he'll stop, and he does.

"Good."

I'm here to help.​

Xion takes a deep breath and backs up the rest of the way to the seats in the middle of the room, because she doesn't want to have Saïx at her back.

"What'd you do to make him angry?" someone says from behind her, and she risks looking at him out of the corner of her eye. It's the brown poofy hair one.

Demyx.​

"I don't know," she says to Demyx, quietly, as she climbs over the back of a seat and drops down onto it. "I think he hates me."

He's mean enough for it.​

"Aw, but you just got here!" Demyx kicks his feet up on the table and puts his hands behind his head. "I mean, that's how it is with me, cause I'm lazy, but you?"

Xion shakes her head. "I don't know," Xion says again, and she sets the papers on the table in front of her, because she has to look at them.

'What was the purpose of the mission?' 'In what ways did you accomplish this purpose?' That looks like homework.​

"Well, lemme know if you need help with that, I guess," Demyx says. "I've got plenty of experience with em."

"You'll have more if you don't have today's mission done in a timely manner, Demyx," Saïx says, which means he was listening. Xion curls in on herself. She doesn't like that.

"Ugh. Fine." Demyx pushes himself up from his seat, waves a hand, and makes a portal thing appear. "I'll get going."

And then he walks into the portal, and Xion's suddenly alone in the room with Saïx. She hunches over more, and switches her weapon to her left hand so she can grab a pen from the table and start writing. She hopes Roxas gets here soon.

-----​

"Morning, Xion," Roxas says.

Xion grabs the report she was writing off the table and stands up in a rush. "Good morning! We should–"

"You should complete your preparations quickly, both of you," Saïx says, stepping into Xion's eyeline towards Roxas, and Xion shifts her weapon into a guard that feels awkward in her left hand, but it's better than nothing. "I've told Xion already, Roxas, but a giant Heartless has appeared, and the two of you will exterminate it today."

Roxas frowns a little and turns towards Saïx. "What, uh, preparations should I be making?"

"Configure your panels, or don't," Saïx says in the flat voice he uses when he's not being mean. He points an arm at the little floating coat with a red ball over its head

That's a moogle.​

the moogle on the edge of the room. Xion has no idea what he means about panels. "I recommend you install at least one Block panel, but getting hurt would be your problem, not mine."

"Right." Roxas turns and starts walking towards the moogle, and Xion goes to follow–

"You stay here."

Xion pushes off the ground to turn her step into a jump to ge out of the way of the hand Saïx was reaching for her with and lands on the other side of the table, her weapon coming up into a higher guard.

"The report," he says. "Give it to me."

Xion looks down at the papers in her hand. "I-it's not done," she says.

"You've done enough for today. You didn't think I couldn't see what you did on missions, did you?" Saïx holds his hand out again. "The report."

I don't like this.​

Neither does Xion.

I don't like him.​

Neither does Xion. She walks carefully around the table anyway, because there's not anything else she can do, and holds the papers out–His hand wraps around her wrist–her weapon comes up under his arm, maybe she can hook around it and force her way free–pale light flashes, and her weapon stops cold, caught on something else in Saïx's other hand. She's stuck.

Saïx glares down at Xion. She can't move. "Don't. Try. To fight me."

Magic! You can use magic!​

Xion has plenty, she doesn't need to move for that, that's a good idea! She says "Fire–"

"Reflect," Saïx says, and light flashes again, and the warmth flowing down Xion's left arm turns back, and she screams.

Xion!​

"Xion!"

Xion's weapon is on the floor. She can't reach it. She needs it, she calls it back, but it hurts to hold onto it, and she can't move her–Saïx has both of her arms. And he can turn her magic back on her.

"What are you doing!" Roxas says. It's Roxas who called her name. The words didn't get a voice of their own. She can't move.

Saïx's glare moves from Xion to something over her shoulder, but that's not any better, because that means he's glaring at Roxas. "Only disciplining an unruly child," he says. "You'll stay back… unless you want to be next."

We need to get out! How do we get out!​

Xion doesn't know. Saïx has both her arms. Magic doesn't work. Her left side hurts. Is he going to kill her? Is she gonna die? She doesn't wanna die. She needs to get out.

You're not gonna die! We're gonna get out of here! And you'll be fine!​

Xion doesn't–Saïx is glaring at her again. She freezes.

"Let her go!" Roxas yells from behind her.

"Very well."

Xion's hands are free again. She scrambles back

Information
Get away!​

away from Saïx on her hands, the papers she was holding long abandoned. "H-Heal!" she says, pushing her weapon up above her head with a shaking hand, and green light flows down over her and takes the pain with it.

"Good, you can put yourself back together," Saïx says from above her. "After you come back from your mision, go find the laundry and get your coat fixed."

Xion nods quickly. She's breathing fast. Her blood's rushing. She needs to get off the ground. She can't move very fast like this.

"I'm glad you understand, Number Fourteen. Now, you two." Saïx waves a hand and makes a portal thing appear in a woosh. "Go do your job. And never fight back again."

We'll have to. If we can't run away.​

Xion hopes she can run away. She nods again and goes through the portal thing as fast as she can, and then she's standing on yellow, and she's not next to Saïx, but he's the one who made the portal thing, so he could just follow her if he wanted to, and she feels terrible. She stumbles over to a wall and leans on it. Her eyes are blurry.

I hate this.​

Roxas rushes through the portal thing in front of her, and his eyes are wide, and he has his weapon out in front of him. "Xion! Are you okay?"

She nods. She's lying. "Let's go… fight the Heartless," she says, pushing herself off the wall.

Roxas shakes his head. "I… We should take it slow. You don't have to force yourself."

He's right. We could stay here for a while.​

"It's just Heartless," she says to both of them. "Those're easy. I'm… okay enough."

Xion…​

"If… you're sure…" Roxas says, frowning.

Xion nods. She is. "I want…" She shuts her eyes, wipes her right sleeve across her face, takes a deep breath, and tries to focus. Her blood's finally starting to slow down, and things aren't blurry anymore. "…I wanna have a fight I can win."

Oh… Yeah. I get it.​

Roxas nods slowly. "Let's go, then. I guess."

Information
Find and defeat the big Heartless!
It's probably a Darkside or a Large Body. Do you remember those?​

She… thinks so. Her memories from before The Fight are stronger than they were yesterday. The one from the Islands was scary, but looking back on it, it's slow, and she has her weapon now. And the round ones, those are easy if you know how to block.

That's right. You'll do great, Xion.​

She will. Heartless are easy. Something has to be.

Xion takes another deep breath, pulls herself up as tall as she can go, and walks out of the tucked away place she appeared in after Roxas.

----------​

Here we see the situation become suddenly and significantly worse. Saïx was not expecting Xion to be so developed and willful by this point in time, but, what a shame, the assassination of Vexen he ordered just took place yesterday, so there's nobody he can ask to try and fix the controllability problem this may cause, and (between you and me) I don't think his current idea of obedience through fear is gonna get the results he wants.

Lemme know what you think about this one!

E: Corrected Xion's "Cure!" to "Heal!" cause Sora doesn't use his spells' names when he casts them.

E2: Fonts. Again.

E3: Minor edits to imply tears.

 

[FormlessAlien]

"Behind us!" Roxas says from Xion's left, and she spins, and there's the Heartless from the Islands, standing up from a pool of black.

Yeah, that's a Darkside.​

It is. She knows how it'll fight.

Information
Win the fight!​

"Be in the air when it punches down!" she tells Roxas as she runs forwards. "Hit the chest balls back, and keep moving!"

"Got it!" he shouts back, and Xion doesn't have time to look and see what he's doing, because the big Heartless is swinging its arm at the ground next to its feet.

"Jump!" Xion says at the same time she does, and a wave of white rushes across the ground under her as the pool at the Heartless's feet surges, and then, what seems like dozens of yellow eyes open in that pool all at once.

"What's it doing?" Roxas asks from right beside her.

"Calling little ones," Xion says. The big Heartless starts standing up, and the small Heartless surge out from its pool and out of the ground towards her and Roxas. She shifts her grip on her weapon and lifts it high. "I've got them! Thunder!" And power surges up through her arms, out the end of her weapon, and then back down in bright lines with a loud boom, and there are a lot less yellow eyes now.

"Okay!" Roxas jumps past her, cuts through the little Heartless in his way, and runs for the big one. "I've got this!"

The rest of the little Heartless still have their eyes on Xion, which is good. She can deal with them, and she doesn't know if Roxas could afford being distracted. She steps back as one of them jumps up out of the ground and tries to slash at her, bats it away with a quick swing of her weapon, dives to her left in a roll as two more try to attack, and then point at them, all in a perfect line. "Deep freeze!" she shouts. Big blocks of ice cover the Heartless that weren't hiding. Their eyes go dark.

That's all of them!​

Xion nods. She'll win before it can call more.

She steps to face the big Heartless again, and its fist full of purple-white power is swinging towards Roxas, and he's dodging, but that's not enough. "In the air!"

"Yeah!" he says back, and he jumps just in time for the new wave of white to slide under him without hitting him. When he steps off the big one's arm and starts swinging at it, hard, Xion's there with him.

Xion swings her weapon in a wide circle, shouts "Force!" and slams her weapon down on the big Heartless's knee, and purple light flares, and its legs collapse and it slams into the ground hand-first in front of her.

Roxas falls from where his weapon was holding him above, pointy-end first, right onto the big Heartless's back. "Take this!"

His weapon sinks deep into it, and Xion joins in, kicking off the ground to hack at its side, but more darkness keeps flowing in to fill the holes. They need to hit it more.

The big Heartless's hand on the ground flexes, and its fingers dig into the pool of black underneath it. Xion recognizes that move, and her magic can't hold it down much longer. She stops letting her weapon carry her, and her next hit on the Heartless launches her away.

"Balls from the sky!" she calls as she slides to a stop. "Get distance! Use magic!"

"I didn't bring any!" Roxas says as he pulls his weapon out of the Heartless and follows her away. She blinks. Didn't bring–? It doesn't matter.

The Heartless is standing back up. In its twitching hand is a clump of red and black, and it lifts the clump up to the sky.

"Dodge! Fire!" Light flashes from Xion's weapon and burns a chunk off the Heartless's side, and she's starting to feel tired, and then the clump in its hand breaks apart into smaller balls, and those balls fly towards the ground… way more slowly than she remembered. A sound comes out–It's a laugh, again. She didn't think she could laugh again. "Nevermind!" she says, and she rushes back in. "Just don't get hit!"

I had trouble with this…?​

"Okay!"

Xion cuts into the Heartless's leg again to get her magic back, and Roxas jumps in above her, slicing into its chest with a shout. The darkness isn't filling in as fast anymore.

It's hurt!​

It is! "Force!" Xion shouts again, jumping up and spinning another purple spell into the Heartless's chest, and her energy drains, but the Heartless slams into the ground again, so it doesn't matter. She shoves her weapon through its side. "Time to end this!"

"Yeah!" Roxas spins around after his weapon in the air and lands hard enough on the Heartless to knock its head the rest of the way into the ground. "You're done!" he says, and his weapon hits the Heartless's head, and there's a flash, and the head's gone. The rest of the Heartless follows the head, burning away in a surge of purple fire.

You did it!​

Xion stands still for a few seconds, breathing hard, staring at the scorches and cracks on the red squares where the big Heartless used to be. She did. And it was easy.

She sets her weapon's end on the ground to hold her up and looks over at Roxas. "Good job," she tells him once she has her breathing back under control.

"You too!" he says, smiling at her. "That magic was amazing!"

Using Gravity on it was a great idea, too!​

Xion smiles back at him, and at the words, leaning harder on her weapon. "Thanks!"

Roxas's weapon disappears from his hands in a flash, and he walks over closer to Xion. "Do you feel better now?"

Does Xion feel–Oh. She slumps. "...Some." Less, now. And now the mission's done. And she has to go back.

No. No, we shouldn't. He'll–He'll hurt you again. We'll have to fight, and I don't know if we can win on our own.​

But… what else can she do? Saïx can make portal things to this yellow and red place, and she doesn't know how to make them at all, and he said he could see what she did on missions, so she can't just hide…

I… I don't know. We need help.​

"Would ice cream help?" Roxas asks her, and she looks over at him. He looks sad, and angry, but not scary like Saïx does. "Do you wanna go to the tower again?"

Xion nods silently. She really doesn't wanna go back.

"Okay." Roxas looks around at the buildings all around, and Xion looks around too. She thinks she sees something move in one of the windows.

I forgot people lived here.​

Xion guesses it would be weird if there was just a place to get ice cream, here, but she never thought about it. She looks down at the cracks and things again. Somebody'll have to fix the things she broke, won't they?

I guess so… I'm glad we destroyed the Heartless, at least, so they don't have to deal with it.​

"I think I know the way from here," Roxas says after a moment, and he starts walking off to the red path they didn't come in through. "This way."

"…Can I try chocolate, this time?" Xion asks as she walks after him, because the words said she should.

"If you want," Roxas says. "Axel says it's not as good, though."

Axel sounds like he knows a lot, but the words know more. "I want to try it," she says more firmly.

It's more that different people like different things. Like, Riku and Kairi and I don't like the same foods, but​

Xion's eyes hit the end of the words, where they just stop, and she blinks. She doesn't think they've done that before. Are they okay?

Yeah. I–I just had an idea. But I don't know how to make it work yet.​

Xion hopes the words can figure it out. Those names… She doesn't remember them very much, but they feel warm.

Up ahead, Roxas looks around again and nods. "Yeah, this is the right way. The ice cream's two roads over."

"Okay," Xion says, and she tries smiling on purpose. She doesn't think she does it quite right.

There's not much walking after that before Xion can see the little building with a black haired person standing behind it. She saw it from a distance last time, because she didn't want to let go of her weapon, but this time, since she knows her weapon will come back, she walks up right beside Roxas.

"Right on time again!" the person says, smiling. She looks over at Xion. "Is this your friend you were buying the extra…" The person's eyes move to Xion's left arm. "…Are you okay? That looks…" Her eyebrows come down, and her smile disappears. "…Do you need a hospital?"

Xion looks down at herself. The end of her sleeve is rough, and shorter than it was before… She didn't notice. Is she supposed to say something? She's… supposed to say what she wants, she thinks, so she says, "I… want some ice cream?" quietly. "Chocolate?" And what's a hospital? Why would she need one?

It's a place people go when they're hurt.​

Oh, that makes sense. "I'm not hurt, either," she adds, and she pulls up her sleeve, nd her skin just has some taller red parts on it that should go away if she uses Cure a few more times, like she expected, but she realizes as soon as she sees it that she shouldn't've looked, because now she's thinking about how she got them. She covers it back up fast, focuses back on the person with black hair, and tries to make herself smile again. "I fixed the burns."

"And I want sea salt," Roxas says beside her.

The black haired person looks really unhappy, now, but she does pull some wrapped ice cream bars out of a box on her side of the little building. "Um, what's your name?" she asks as she hands Xion one of the ice creams.

"Xion?" she says, confused. She has no idea why this person wants to know, but she wants the ice cream.

The person sets the ice cream in Xion's hands. "Here you go, Xion."

Xion looks over at Roxas. "Aren't we supposed to give her money?"

"Don't worry, Xion and…"

"Uh, Roxas," Roxas says. He looks as confused as Xion feels.

"Xion and Roxas." The person holds the other bar out to Roxas and smiles, but the smile looks weird. "Ice cream's on me, today."

"...Cool!" Roxas says, and he takes the ice cream. "Thanks!"

"No problem," she says. "Enjoy!"

"Okay," Xion says slowly, and she turns and starts walking towards where she thinks the tower is. She doesn't know what's going on.

She seemed worried, but I dunno either. I don't see how your name could let her help.​

Neither does Xion. It was nice of her to give them ice cream without any money, though. She looks back, as she's going around a turn onto another road, and the person with the ice cream has a box up to her ear that it looks like she's talking into. Do the words…?

No, I dunno what the box is. She's talking into it like a phone, but those are shaped way different and they plug into the wall.​

Weird. Xion… wonders what a phone is, too, and a plug, but that doesn't really matter. Roxas is getting ahead of her, and since the words warned her about ice cream melting last time, she guesses she needs to get to the tower fast, too, and not just eat it fast, and she has to run to catch up.

----------​

E: Elaborated on Xion's reaction to her burns.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Information
Focus on eating your ice cream!​

Xion definitely wants to, so she won't have to think about–so she won't have to think. She bites into her ice cream, and… "Mgh?"

"Is it bad?" Roxas asks from beside her as he finishes unwrapping his own ice cream.

Xion shakes her head quickly, eyes very wide. it–it tastes so much, like the sea salt did, except this one's familiar in that way things she doesn't know but the words do sometimes are, and Xion has no idea what it tastes like, she doesn't have the words, but it's good! She swallows her first bite, so she can say, "I wanna try all the flavors!"

Vanilla's good, too. Did you see if there was vanilla?​

Xion didn't, she doesn't know how she'd know what the ice cream person has, but she'll find it somewhere else if there isn't. She takes another bite.

"Do–Uh. That's good," Roxas says. She doesn't really pay attention. She's busy eating ice cream.

She gets through the ice cream almost as fast as yesterday, heals herself to get rid of the headache it gave her, and leans back on her hands to stare up at the orange sky. Then, the words write something new in the corner of the world.

Information
Find out if Roxas can make those dark portals!
I have an idea.​

Xion's smile shrinks. "Can you make the portal things?" she asks him, still looking up at the sky. She hopes he can, because she thinks she knows what the words want to do, but she thinks he probably can't.

"Uh, like–?" there's a woosh on Xion's left, and then a second woosh on her right, and she sees swirling black in the corner of her eyes. Her blood speeds up.

He can.​

Xion spins to the side and her eyes lock onto Roxas. "How do you make them? Where can they go? Can you teach me? Please?" she asks urgently, the words coming out of her mouth in a rush.

"Uh, I can… try?" Roxas says, and his eyes are wide too. He waves his hand, and the dark portal thing floating behind him disappears. "I don't know… where they can go, I don't really make them to go places that aren't the castle."

That… doesn't sound good, but Xion tries not to be discouraged. "And making them? How does that work?"

"I just… I pull on the… prickly cold stuff, and ask it to let me go somewhere." Roxas shrugs, and he looks away from Xion and down at the buildings below. "I dunno. Sorry."

Xion has no idea what the prickly cold stuff is. That's definitely not good. She takes a deep breath. "Can you…make me one?" she asks. "So I don't have to go back to where–" Her voice catches in her throat, and she swallows even though she's not eating anything and squeezes her eyes shut, and makes herself keep talking. "…where Saïx is?"

"Oh," Roxas says. "Yeah, I–I can try."

That's–that's good. "Okay," she says. "Thank you. I–" She doesn't know–Is she gonna go to the islands? Are the islands still in the dark? She looks at the words.

I don't know, but I know Riku isn't there. There's another castle we have to go to.​

Another castle. What does it look like? Why is Xion going there?

I remember going there, after beating… something, and I knew as soon as I walked in that Riku was there. It's white on the inside, really bright white, and the rooms turn into other places sometimes.​

Xion hopes that's enough. She opens her eyes again. "There's a castle, with bright white rooms that turn into other places."

"A second castle?" Roxas asks. Do the words know more? Anything?

It feels brighter than the one we came from.​

"It feels brighter than the one we came from," Xion repeats, even though she doesn't understand what that means.

"Okay." Roxas frowns. He looks like he's concentrating really hard. Xion thinks she sees his shadow twitch. "A bright castle… where the rooms turn into other places…" He reaches out to the flat part of the tower behind him, and black wooshes up from the pale yellow floor into another portal thing, which means it worked.

It worked.​

It worked.

It worked!
Information
Go through the portal and escape!​

"I think this should go there," Roxas says, and Xion smiles.

"Thank you," she says. The words come out rough, and her eyes are blurry again, and there's wet on her cheeks, but she's so happy. She doesn't have to go back. "Thank you!"

Roxas smiles, too, but it looks not quite right. "You're… welcome," he says. "We should probably… go, though. I don't know how long the, uh, thing will last."

Xion immediately launches herself to her feet, her own smile slipping. She should've done what the words said right away. She won't take too long. She won't get trapped here. She steps towards the portal, and then she stops, and looks back down at Roxas to see him standing up, because there's something she's supposed to say when she leaves, but she's not quite sure what it is, and then she realizes Roxas said 'we,' and she says, "You're coming with me?"

That's great!​

Roxas nods. "Yeah, I… think I know what castle you're going to. But we should go."

Xion nods and calls her weapon in a flash of light. "Let's go!" she says, and she jumps through the portal thing and lands… on… the red ground. She blinks.

This looks like the place by the ice cream stand, but the ice cream's not here.​

Xion thought this castle was supposed to be white? She turns around to see Roxas step out of the portal–She gasps. "G…"

Goofy! Donald!​

Those are their names! "Goofy! Donald!" Xion steps forward, smiling, and then someone else steps out from behind the portal thing, and she freezes. She's… seen that face. In the mirror. Is it hers?

Is that me?​

"Who're you?" Not-Xion says in an unhappy voice, holding Xion's weapon out towards her. "Are you here to–to taunt me about Naminé and Riku, too?"

"The girl in front sounds happy ta see us," Goofy says "Maybe these two are friends, and we forgot 'em?"

Forgot…?​

Donald shakes his head, staring at Xion in a suspicious way that hurts to see. "They've both got the keyblade! We wouldn't forget about that!"

Xion doesn't know what's happening. They don't recognize her, why don't they recognize her–why does she want them to? She doesn't remember them, except for flashes, but the words know their names, and–

I–I don't know either, but that's–that's me standing there, not you or us, and–I don't know, but we need to
Information
Avoid a fight with Donald, Goofy, and the copy!​

Xion's head hurts, and so do her feelings, but the words are right, so she takes a breath and makes herself talk. "I. I'm not here to taunt… you," she says to Not-Xion, looking as much at the face from the mirror as she can manage. "I'm looking for Riku. I need help."

Not-Xion's frown shrinks, and Xion's weapon in Not-Xion's hand lowers. "You too? Maybe we really did forget–Woah!" Not-Xion suddenly jumps off the ground, moving faster than Xion can anymore, and Xion spins to follow, lifting her weapon to cast–

Oh no!​

"Roxas!" Xion says, and she rushes over to where he just fell, where Not-Xion's holding him. He's limp in Not-Xion's arms, like he's asleep, but his eyes are wide open, and he just–he just collapsed! Is he hurt? She can fix hurt! "Heal!" she shouts, waving her weapon over him, and green light falls into him, but nothing changes.

"What's going on!" Donald shouts from behind her.

"I don't know!" Xion says. "He just–collapsed!" Her voice is echoing.

Xion hears the slap-slap-slap of Donald's footsteps coming up to her. "Libra," he says, but nothing happens that Xion can see, and he sighs. "No, no, of course I forgot that too." A feathery white hand reaches past Xion to hover over Roxas's mouth. "He's still breathing. Sora, lay him down so I can get a better look.

Sora? Is that…​

X​S​io​on nods, and she reaches out to–She stops, and blinks. There's hands there already, leaning Roxas back onto the ground. Wait, why did she… She's Xion. What's she doing?

I… think Sora might be my name. Or… was. Or something.​

That… makes sense, kind of. Xion remembers a lot of stuff the words do (Sora does?), just not as much, or as strong, so confusing her name for theirs… But, no, why would Donald ask the words to do something, when they don't have arms–How would he know they were there in the first place? And why did Not-Xion… answer…

"…Are you Sora, too?" Xion asks the person with the face she–or the words, she supposes–sees in the mirror.

"That's my name," the Sora who isn't words says as he frowns down at Roxas, looking confused. "Did the castle take–Wait. 'Am I Sora too?'" Sora looks really confused, now, but for Xion, things are just starting to make enough sense.

Well, they're not for me. How are there two of me?​

That's very very weird, but it's also something she has to do later. She clenches her fists, stands up straight, and takes a deep breath. "The words in the corner of the world are called Sora, but we need to help Roxas and find Riku, so that doesn't matter," she says out loud, because she wants both Soras to hear it, and she needs to believe it too.

You're right. Sorry, Xion.​

The Sora who isn't words's face turns serious. "Yeah. We can figure that out later." He looks to the side. "Donald? Is–Roxas, right?" He looks at Xion. She nods. "Is Roxas okay?"

"I… I don't understand what's going on," Donald says, and Xion thinks he's not just talking about Roxas. "He seems like he's just asleep, but with the way he just fell over…" Donald shakes his head.

"We'll take him with us, then," the Sora who isn't words says, and he stands up. "Goofy, can you carry Roxas?"

"I sure can!" Goofy crouches down, puts an arm around Roxas, and picks him up really easily. "I hope we can figure out what's wrong with him soon…"

Xion hopes so, too. He's here because she ran away, and he helped her, and then he just falls over. Maybe he really is just asleep, maybe he'll wake up tomorrow…

He'll be okay. Whatever's wrong, we'll fix it.​

Xion nods. That… She'll… She'll make that be true. She calls her weapon, squeezes its handle tight, and takes a deep breath." Where are we going?" she asks.

"We don't know," the not words Sora says. "Every floor of the castle's been kind of a jumbled-up maze, and none of us even remember being here before. All I know is we came from there," he points at the corner she thinks goes to the tower from here, "so we shouldn't go that way."

"We're keeping on the right side when we can," Donald says.

Well, Xion knows about being lost in mazes… "We should go, then," she says, and she starts walking. "This has to end somewhere."

 

[FormlessAlien]

Information
Protect Roxas from the Heartless!​

"Heartless!" the outside Sora shouts at the same time as the words appear. Very briefly, as she jumps towards the side road the eight tallish Heartless are coming out of, Xion thinks maybe seeing Heartless fast is a skill everyone who's been Sora has. Then, her first swing smashes one Heartless's head into another, and she focuses.

"Fire!" she says, sweeping her weapon across the line of Heartless that didn't manage to get onto the main road yet as she follows through on her first attack, and she jumps back so the fire can't get on her when they dive towards her in the last seconds before they fade into purple mist. Now, she has their attention. "Sora!"

The outside Sora doesn't answer with words, but his weapon flies across her vision from the right almost as soon as she's done talking, and then he follows it through the air, catches it as it bounces off the back of the Heartless that's the furthest out's head, and slams it straight through two more with one swing. "Take that!"

Xion misses that strength, but she doesn't need it. She swings her weapon out level with her shoulder one handed, chants "Fire! Fire!" to burn the two Heartless further from her that are in outside Sora's way, and then steps in and swings at the one she knocked over at the start of the fight as he stabs through the one she knocked it into, and all of the Heartless are gone. She jams her weapon's point into the ground, leans on it, and tries to slow her blood back down.

You're getting faster!​

Faster with easy spells, and a lot of that's the outside Sora getting used to fighting with her. This was way slower than Xion could go if she could use Thunder.

You're a lot of the speed in fights too, Xion. It's not good to talk down about yourself!​

Xion's just thinking the truth. She's been just as good at fighting since she woke up to her inside Sora's words in front of her.

"Leave some for the rest of us!" Donald says from back behind her, but his magic's more limited than hers since he can't afford to fight up close and get it back, and he's already told that joke anyway.

"Maybe next time!" outside Sora says, smiling back at Xi–at his friends.

They're our friends too, Xion.​

Xion frowns. She barely even remembers–

"You did great, Xion!" outside Sora interrupts happily, and he reaches towards her. She doesn't flinch this time, grabs it, and lets him pull her upright.

"Fighting's what I'm good at," she says. If she hits first. If what she's fighting can't turn her magic back on her.

There's four of us, now. We'll beat him, if we have to fight him again.​

Three. Someone has to hold Roxas, because she got him hurt.

Three's still more, and Roxas'll get better, and then we'll have five!​

Xion's inside Sora is… She doesn't know the word. But even if what he writes seems so far away right now, she still has to make it true.

"We should keep moving, if nobody's too tired," Donald says. "Goofy?"

"Roxas ain't that heavy," Goofy answers cheerfully. "I could carry him all day!"

Xion's glad for that, because she definitely couldn't. She looks away from the words and squeezes her weapon's handle to remind herself it's there. "Us in front again?" she asks outside Sora.

"Yeah." He turns back to the way they were all going before the Heartless appeared and he starts walking, weapon swinging in one hand at his side, and she walks beside him. "Were you talking to the other me, there?"

Xion blinks. "Yeah?" How did he know? Can he see the words too?

I don't think so. Or, I can't see his thoughts like I can see yours, at least.​

So, it's not that, then.

"You kinda stand there and make faces, sometimes," outside Sora says. "I thought that's what it probably meant, but I wasn't sure, cause I can't see your eyes under your hood."

"Why are ya wearin' that hood, anyway?" Goofy asks from behind Xion. "And that black coat, like Axel and L–Lar–the lady with the lightning?"

Axel? Isn't that the guy who said that 'icing on the cake' thing to Roxas?​

Xion almost doesn't notice that she's slowing down. How would they–Maybe they're talking about a different Axel?

Well, maybe​

"Larxene," Donald says before the words finish appearing.

No, that's definitely one of the colors from the castle.​

"Yeah, Larxene," Goofy says. "And that other guy, too…"

Xion… Xion stops walking. She thinks she knows what's going on. She hopes she's wrong, she really hopes she's wrong, but she has to know. "…Is this Castle Oblivion?" she asks, looking at the ground.

Oh. Oh no.​

"Uh, that's what everyone says it's called," outside Sora says, and Xion feels like her blood's stopped moving altogether. "Why?"

Xion takes a deep breath, and makes herself talk. It's hard. "I came here to get away from–from Saïx, cause Riku's here, and he could help me. But he's–he knows where this is. He could…" She grabs her weapon even tighter. So tight it almost hurts. "He could come and get me."

"…Gawrsh," Goofy says quietly.

Donald slap-slap-slaps up around in front of her. "Would you be okay telling us what this Saïx did, to make you run away, Xion?" he asks, and when she lifts her head up to see him, he has a look on his face a lot like the one the black haired person with the ice cream had after she saw her arm.

"He burned me," Xion says. "With my own fire."

"Well, he won't do that again," Donald says, staring at her like looking serious is gonna make what he's saying true.

"That's right," Goofy says from behind her. "We'll keep ya safe, Xion."

"That's right!" outside Sora says, and Xion looks at him, and he looks the same kind of unhappy Donald does. "Even if he comes here, he won't get close to you!"

I told you they were our friends too.​

Xion blinks her eyes to get the blurriness out of them and looks down again. She doesn't know whether she feels happy or bad. She opens her mouth, tries to think of what she wants to say, and says "W-we should get moving," instead.

"Ya don't gotta if you're not up to it."

Xion shakes her head, stands herself up as tall as she can, and takes a deep breath. "…I do," she says to Goofy. "We need to help Roxas and find Riku. But I'm okay enough anyway."

"Xion's right," outside Sora says. "And we have to find Naminé, too!"

…Naminé?​

The name doesn't sound familiar to Xion, either, like all the other names have. "Who's Naminé?" she asks.

"Did you–uh, did the me in your head forget her? Like I did?" outside Sora says. "She's the girl we used to play with, Riku and I."

Xion frowns. "…That's Kairi, I thought?"

Yeah, it was always Kairi and Riku and me.​

Xion nods. "My Sora says it's Kairi, too."

Outside Sora's eyes get weird. "…Kai…ri…? I…"

…I feel like something's pulling on me, Xion. Something's going on.​

Something's pulling on Xion's Sora? That… shouldn't make sense. But she just felt something inside her chest try to move, too.

"…Kairi's the one who was stuck in your heart, wasn't she?" Donald asks.

She is! She disappeared when the islands sank in the darkness, and I had to get her out! She has red hair, she cuts it kinda short, she came from another island somewhere that we couldn't find, you promised you'd come back to her–He can't see me. He can't see me.​

"…I… can't… remember…" the outside Sora says. It sounds like the words hurt to say. "…Red…? Her hair was…"

Something's really wrong!​

Xion nods, at both Soras at once. "You promised you'd come back to her," she says urgently, half repeating what the inside Sora said and half remembering it herself. "The ground was coming apart, and you were holding hands, and there was water. You said you're always with her!"

Outside Sora's eyes get wet, and his face… Xion doesn't know the word, but he looks so, so sad. "I can't remember," he says. "Somehow, I know all that's true, but I can't remember!"

"To claim anew, only to lose…" Donald says, like it means something, and like he hates what it means. He grabs his weapon with both hands and glares at the yellow and red buildings around the road. "We have to go faster. Who knows what else we forgot that we forgot!"

"And who knows what Naminé might forget, or how much Riku might change, if we take too long!" Goofy says. "But I don't know how we could go much faster, neither!"

What's going on? Why are they talking like forgetting things is supposed to happen?​

Xion doesn't know, and she's getting more and more worried at the same time she's getting more confused, but before she can try to ask, outside Sora moves with all the speed Xion doesn't have anymore and grabs her shoulders with that same awful sadness on his face.

"You'll remember Kairi, won't you?" he says desperately, staring into Xion's eyes. "You'll tell me about her, when we get out of here? Remind me what I forgot? Please!"

I'll never forget her! And–And whatever this is, that's messing with your memories, once it's over, if you still can't remember, we'll remind you!​

Xion nods, pushes down the urge to make him let go of her, and takes a hand off her weapon to put on his shoulder instead. She doesn't understand what's happening at all, but she can't let that stop her now any more than she did before. "We won't ever forget," she says with as much belief as she can put into her voice. The words feel heavy. "Wherever you go, she's always with you."

"Then… you remember Kairi, and I'll remember Naminé, and we'll get everyone out of here, and it'll all be fine!" outside Sora says, and the words remind her of what her inside Sora would tell her about things getting better that she couldn't get herself to believe. He pulls away from Xion, spins around, and calls his weapon in a flash. "Let's go! We're wasting time here!"

Information
Get to the end of wherever you are!​

Xion nods, Donald says "Yeah!" and Goofy says "Let's go!" beside her, and then they're all running.

Heartless try to stop them, coming out of alleys and climbing out of the ground and jumping down from the rooves, but between outside Sora's weapon, Xion's fire, Goofy's shield, and Donald's thunder, they only last seconds, and then, Xion's slowing down on a floor of grass (she's never seen grass before, has she? It doesn't matter) in front of a wall that blocks the way to a tiny castle. Xion doesn't know how much later it is, when she stops, leaning on her weapon, but it can't have been that long. Even though her blood feels like it wants to explode out of her with how fast it's moving, and even though she's breathing harder than she ever has before, she still ran all the way here.

"I've been here before," outside Sora says, walking out in front of her. He isn't breathing hard at all. "I don't remember it, but it's familiar. Do you know it, Xion, other me?"

"It's… the city… we came from…" Xion says between breaths. She looks at the corner of the world.

I've never been to this mansion, or this city, before I was in you.​

"My Sora… doesn't know…"

Xion sees outside Sora's shoulders shift, and he holds his weapon tighter. "It doesn't matter. We just need to get through this gate and keep going, and we can figure out why I know this place later!"

Xion nods and does her best to straighten up. "…You're–"

"So quick to dismiss inconsistencies," a voice Xion knows but doesn't recognize interrupts her, and then black wooshes up in front of the–outside Sora called it a gate–the gate, and she pulls her weapon out of the ground and holds it out… It's the long pale-haired one, standing there in front of her. The one who used to follow her, sometimes, who muttered to himself a lot.

Vexen.​

Vexen. Vexen stares down at Sora, a frown on his face, and then his eyes flick over to Goofy and Roxas, and then to Xion, and those eyes go wide. "You aren't supposed to–Take off your hood!"

Xion's hand is reaching up and pulling her hood back before she realizes what she's doing. She blinks. "Why…"

Behind her, Donald and Goofy gasp. She barely notices.

"It is you," Vexen says. His eyes narrow. "Number i. What are you doing here?"

Number…?​

What did he… "Xion," Xion says, and she takes another deep breath to try again to get her breathing under control. "My name's Xion."

"Of course, of course, that's what the Superior called you, but that's not important," Vexen says, sweeping a hand through the air like he's pushing the words away. "What's important is that you are supposed to be at the Castle being useful, but you're here instead. Explain yourself."

Who does he think he is, ordering you around like that? And why's he talking like Xion's not your name?​

Xion doesn't know, but she doesn't like it. "I don't have to tell you anything," she says, frowning. She holds her weapon up, ready to cast magic, pointed at his face. "And I'm not going back."

Vexen sighs, and he looks at Xion like she's a… bug, or something, that's annoying him. She hates it. "You owe me your very existence, Number i, as well as that keyblade in your hands, but I suppose it would be too much to hope for you to remember after you were anchored." White flickers around Vexen's hand, and then there's a flash, and he's holding a weapon–a long, spiky, blue shield. "Given Number Thirteen is unconscious, I suppose you–"

Doctor, an empty voice says.

Vexen grimaces. "Assistant, this is not a good time."

I have recovered your notes, the voice continues, like it didn't hear him, and the white, wiggly body of a Dusk slithers over the wall, holding…

Aren't those the files we took from that hidden room?​

They are… They're Vexen's? Xion frowns, and her weapon lowers. Wasn't… Number i on the label of that picture?

It was 'No. i Unanchored Activation Test XII.' And he's calling you Number… i…​

Xion… thinks she might know why that ceiling was familiar.

He… said you owe him your existence. You don't think…​

"Very good, I suppose," Vexen grumbles, looking over at the Dusk. "Everything's there?"

The Dusk nods with their whole body. Several pages were removed from their folders, so they will need reorganizing, Doctor, but as far as I can tell, nothing has been lost.

"Put them back where they're supposed to be and report to me later, then," Vexen says. "Right now, I–"

"Nobody cares about your notes!" outside Sora shouts. "You can tell us what you know after you've put Riku back and you're out of our way!"

Put Riku… back…?​

Vexen makes a sound like a laugh, except that it isn't happy at all. "My Riku isn't worth the metal in his bones anymore, with how much of my work's been twisted and thrown out by now, but I suppose you have something of a point." Vexen brings his shield up again, and he lifts his right hand, and white magic starts to gather in it, and he smiles a smile that's just as happy as his laugh. "If you insist on fighting, then I suppose I'll see if my first prototype turned out any better than my second, Number i, Xion!"

Information
Beat Vexen!​

----------​

Got a thread for this here.

 

[FormlessAlien]

Adena sees a living aura move in the edge of her vision, and she looks up, and she sees Toriel walk through the doorway from the kitchen holding something hotter than Adena's skin would survive touching that has echoes of a fire spell she doesn't recognize hanging off of it in her hands. "Come to the table, would you, little ones?" Toriel says. "Dinner is ready."

｢Yeah, that's definitely snail pie,｣ the ghost on Adena's shoulder says as she stands up. ｢It's an acquired taste that I never really managed to acquire.｣

Adena thinks it smells pretty good, from over here. She eagerly steps towards–

"Oh!" Toriel steps over towards Adena, concern sinking inside her, and reaches out a hand to hover over Adena's shoulder. "Do you–Have you regained your balance, Adena? Would you like me to hold your hand again?"

The ghost person says something that sounds like 'worrywart.'

"Uh, no, I'm good." Mostly. Adena probably shouldn't run very far until she gets her blood fixed.

"If you are sure," Toriel says, pulling back but still staying really close.

This time, the ghost definitely says 'worrywart.'

Adena looks at them, looks at the food (snail pie?) in Toriel's hand, and decides she wants to eat more than she wants to know the ghost's story. "Yeah, I'm sure," she says, and she takes a couple quick steps over to the chair on the close side of the table, hops over the back because she can (and the ghost yelps and holds onto her shoulder tighter), catches herself with her palms on the armrests, and folds her legs under her so she'll be tall enough to not be reaching up to the table. She looks back over at Toriel. "So, the ghost says this is snail pie? What's that?"

"It's a pie made with snails," Toriel says. That suspicion Adena keeps seeing is back again, with a flicker of hope underneath it, and she looks over Adena's shoulder in the way mundanes do when they're trying to see something they can't, and. Well. Adena thinks she might know what's going on with that, now. "…Would you care to ask that ghost their name, Adena?"

The ghost's (very cold, as it turns out) fingers tighten on Adena's shoulder, sliding right through her coat as they very clearly forget they shouldn't be able to do that and pressing into her skin hard enough she wonders if it'll bruise. "They can hear you themself," Adena tells Toriel as she reaches up and tugs gently on the ghost's arm. "But, uh, just a guess, they… probably don't wanna talk about it, and also they should stop trying to burrow into my flesh?"

｢You're right,｣ the ghost person says, and they loosen their grip enough Adena can pull them off her without hurting them. She shifts them more in front of her, where they can't reach anything that's not chrome, and lets go. ｢Sorry. I don't–I'm not used to–｣

"You don't have much practice with people you can still touch, these days?" Adena guesses, trying to keep her tone more on the gentle end than the annoyed end, cause the guilt in twisting through the ghost person's stitched-together body make her pretty sure they really are sorry.

The ghost pulls their legs out of the table and looks down. ｢More like anything at all,｣ they say. ｢I was stuck over my grave and barely fucking awake for–for who knows how long until you fell down and–｣ They look up, at Toriel and the hope and regret and sadness swirling around her, and cover their face with their hands. ｢I should've fucking stayed.｣

Adena looks back and forth between the ghost, who definitely knew Toriel when they were alive and feels terrible about everything, and Toriel, who's staring at absolutely the wrong spot now that the ghost's on the table and looks almost the same amount of awful. She is not cut out for this.

Adena claps her hands with a loud metal-on-metal clack and puts on a very-badly-fitting smile. "Oookay, so this is–like, there's a lot happening between you, and I'm not acting as the go between for the conversation you need to have."

Toriel's eyes move from the empty space to the ghost's left to Adena's face, and anger flickers in her chest almost fast enough Adena misses it before it gets buried in more guilt. "But–Adena, I–"

"I am teaching you to perceive," Adena continues like the floppy-eared really-caring apparently-a-mess didn't say anything, "or teaching you, ghost who doesn't wanna say their name, to manifest, and then you are talking about this yourselves where I can't turn the whole thing into an exercise in 'miscommunication kills'! Okay?"

Even more guilt gathers in Toriel's soul, and the flicker of hope burns into a little star, and she nods. "Okay," she says quietly.

Adena shifts her eyes to the ghost where they've sunk three centimeters into the tabletop probably without thinking. "Okay?" she says again.

｢I–But I got both of us killed!｣ they almost shout. ｢I don't–I don't deserve–｣

"Not my problem, and also Mom says we don't deserve most of what people think about us, so shut up and agree!" Adena tells them sharply. "I wanna see what this 'acquired taste' you were talking about is before it goes cold."

The ghost stares at Adena for a bit, eyes very wide, and then they sink down into the table. ｢...Fine,｣ they say in a voice that really isn't. Adena tells herself that it's really not her problem.

"…I would appreciate it," Toriel says from beside her, "if you would refrain from yelling at Ch–at my child. Adena."

Adena looks over at Toriel, and that ember of anger she buried before is spitting sparks in her chest, and Adena's pretty sure her outside temperature jumped up, like, five degrees, and Adena shuts her eyes and breathes in for the first time in ten minutes to calm herself down. "…Sorry," she says, and it's like they're all passing the guilt stick around and it's her turn now. "I should've…" She sets her elbows on the table and drops her head into her hands. "Ugh, this is why I run with a face–I won't do it again."

"Be sure that you do not," Toriel says, and their big voice picks back up some of its gentle. The dish with the snail pie stuff in it clunks onto the table. "I will go fetch some plates and forks. Please wait here."

It's not like Adena's got any reason not to. She lifts her head up, folds her hands together, and taps her fingertips on the backs of her wrists just for something to do, and stares at the middle of the table where the ghost was before. "…Sorry to you, too, ghost person. I'm… like, I meant what I said about not getting in the middle of what's going on, but you're your own person. I shouldn't be telling you what to do."

｢...It's okay,｣ the ghost says, still under the table, still sounding not fine. ｢Making my own decisions never seems to work out anyway.｣

Adena thinks about offering a hug again, but she was just a little bit of a terrible person to this ghost, so she just sits there and stares at the table. "…So," she says awkwardly, mostly so it won't be quiet. "What's a snail?"

｢What's a–｣ The ghost reaches up and pulls themself up through the table like they can't just float until their head's poking out. ｢Are you serious?｣

Adena shrugs and leans back. "I mean, I don't know what a snail is, and I can't look it up without Matrix, so…?"

｢…Huh.｣ The ghost pulls themself all the way out of the table. ｢A snail's–Do you know what a slug is?｣

"Like what you shoot from a shotgun?" Adena asks, and the flat look on the ghost's face immediately tells her that was the wrong answer.

｢Like the slimy thing that dies if you put salt on it,｣ the ghost says. ｢How do I…｣ They lean back, frown, and look up at the ceiling. ｢A snail has a shell on its back, and the rest of–｣

"I have a book of snail facts, if you would like to learn about them after dinner," Toriel interrupts as she walks back into the room with three cool white plates that look greyer and deader that most things people use a lot in her hands.

The ghost sighs and just lies down, right on top of the pie. ｢Can you tell Mom I'm explaining it, Adena? Please?｣

Oh. Well. 'My child' indeed. "The ghost says they're explaining it, Toriel," Adena says, not mentioning the 'Mom' thing because she's pretty sure Toriel already knows who they are anyway and Adena already decided she's not getting in the middle of that.

"Oh, alright." Toriel sets the plates on the table (one of them directly through the ghost's legs) and misses the ghost with another glance. "Go ahead, my child. I will remain quiet."

｢Thanks, Adena,｣ Toriel's dead kid says. ｢So, like I was saying, it has a shell, and the rest of its body is one big soft foot.｣

"A… foot?" Adena gives the pie in the middle of the table a look. She hopes snails aren't as disgusting as that makes them sound.

The ghost sighs. ｢...Maybe that was the wrong place to start describing things.｣

 

[FormlessAlien]

Adena leans back in her chair and sighs. "That was way better than something made of feet wearing helmets should be."

｢I mean. I don't agree,｣ the ghost says from where they're laying directly on top of Adena's empty plate. ｢It's way too chewy. But I've got the feeling I'm outvoted.｣

"Anything can be delicious when it is cooked well," Toriel says after another couple seconds, like she started doing once she realized she was talking over her kid. "But I think the strangeness of snails makes them taste all the better."

The ghost huffs, staring up at the ceiling. ｢Like I said.｣ They put their hands behind their head (through the top of the table, again), and more complicated feelings flicker inside them. ｢...Are you teaching Mom to astrally perceive, or whatever you called it, today?｣ they ask, quieter.

"If I can," Adena answers. "Which… yeah." She should see if that's something she can, like, do, in any reasonable amount of time. She grabs the arms of her chair with the unsharpened parts of her fingers and lifts herself onto the ground. "Toriel?"

Toriel looks back from kind of where the ghost is over at Adena. "Yes, little one?"

"Can I read your aura deeper?" Adena asks, holding out a hand. "To see if you've got enough magic free to learn the quick way?"

Toriel's eyebrows scrunch up, and confusion swirls around her, and, right. Missing half the conversation. "Learn what? To, ah, perceive?"

Adena nods. "Yeah, the ghost person was asking if I'd teach you today." She shakes her hand around in the air. "So?"

"I suppose," Toriel says, and she stands from her own chair and reaches her hand for Adena's. As she does, Adena very carefully stops ignoring all the flickers of memory and emotion everything around her, does her best to not think about the loneliness and despair trying to crawl up her legs from the floor underneath her, and

Another child fallen down. Not moving. Metal, a bad sign, she doesn't remember why. Holds out a hand, flame gathers, pulls the child's soul to the surface, turns from killing to soothing with the ease of long practice–​

Adena blinks and shakes her head. Toriel's hand is in hers, warm and ancient and full of power, and Toriel looks very concerned. "Uh, sorry, I got lost in a vision. It… happens, sometimes, when I'm looking close at stuff."

"…And you are well?" Toriel asks carefully. "I remember, long ago, that seers–" war, none may escape, more fall from the sky, they speak of the end and Adena holds in a gasp "–were sometimes drawn to see terrible things."

"Y-yeah. That. Happens." Adena swallows and does her best to get control of her soul's senses and get them in the right place and out of everywhere else. "I'm okay, just. Gimme a moment, you're not, um, a very familiar. Shape."

Toriel doesn't get any less worried, and Adena feels the echoes of Toriel's soul ripple against her. They feel… backwards. Bright. Brittle. Older than anything. "Adena, we can do this later. You are in distress."

Adena latches onto those echoes, closing her fingers around them, holding them against Toriel's arm. "I've had worse," she says absently as she stares without her eyes at the shapes in front of her. There's… so much here she's never seen. And so much she's focusing very hard on not seeing. "I don't… think what I know will. Work." She doesn't know how to teach a spirit to see the astral. She shouldn't have to. Especially not one shaped like this.

Adena opens her hand, letting the ripples of fire and glass fall out of her grip, feels them try to latch onto her like she did them, and pulls away from Toriel like she's the fire she feels like. She steps back and looks up at the ceiling, and focuses on that, and pushes all the meanings and memories she doesn't need to see anymore out of her mind.

"Adena–!"

"Just a minute don't touch me right now!" Adena says quickly, taking another couple steps back. The floor's still trying to tell her about the other two white spirits, and dust like blood, and she doesn't wanna hear it.

She switches over to outside air and takes a deep breath. And then another. And another.

"…Adena?" Toriel says quietly, after–Alexa, how long?–another two minutes.

Adena takes one last deep breath and looks down from the ceiling. Toriel and her kid are both staring at her. "…I'm good."

｢You don't look good,｣ the ghost says, frowning at her. They cross their arms. ｢What was all that? You were glowing! Even more than usual!｣

"Psychometry," Adena says. She runs a hand through her hair. "I think the house was trying to tell me about Toriel's other kid."

The ghost's frown shifts, and that guilt that just keeps coming back grows inside them again, and they look down at their hands. ｢...Great,｣ they say quietly.

"…I am sorry to ask this while you are recovering," Toriel says, and her feelings are falling into her usual cocktail of unpleasantness, "but when you said what you knew would not work, what did you mean?"

"You–your soul's…" Adena waves her hand vaguely, looking for the words. "…You're shaped like a spirit, kind of, except you're all the way in meatspace. Or a backwards metahuman, made of crystal. And I don't know how to teach a spirit to see the astral, cause they, uh, live there, and also basically any spirit is better at magic than I am and you're way stronger at it than I am and also so much older I actually can't imagine it, so…"

"…Ah," Toriel says. "Then, you mentioned teaching my child to materialize, earlier?"

"Yeah, that'd be a challenge, since I'm way too tied into my body to project and do it myself, but at least I know it's possible?"

The hope inside Toriel dims more, and Adena doesn't like that.

"There's a thing, though," she rushes to say. "That you did when you found me on the flowers? You pulled on my soul, or something, and I think you almost did that just now, too, and that might do something, maybe?"

Toriel blinks, confused. "How–" The confusion burns away, and hope shines brighter again. "Ah, yes, you are a seer. And… I suppose, yes, I did almost draw out your soul by reflex. You think that doing so might help me to see, somehow?"

"Uh, maybe!" Adena says. "I mean, you perceive by pushing your soul kind of up and out, so we might as well–" and then Adena very abruptly remembers she's now working with some kind of magic spirit power thing she's never even heard of before, and she asks, "Uh, whatever that is, it won't hurt me if you do it, right?"

Toriel shakes her head. "No. That is the method by which we Monsters fight, but it only makes you vulnerable to us, and no harm will come unless I were to wish it, which I do not."

…Adena can buy that. And she's in range to put a hand through Toriel's chest if she has to. "Okay, sounds good." She spreads her arms wide and smiles. "Do the, uh, soul! Thing!"

The ghost clenches their hands and looks up. ｢You think a fight'll–｣

Something pulls in Adena's chest.

Everything lurches.

The colors and lights and feelings of the Astral are suddenly gone, except for Toriel, standing in front of her, shining bright white just like her soul's echoes felt.

Oh dear! Toriel says in a soundless voice, eyes wide. Adena, your arms! Your legs!

Adena blinks. "…What? What's…" She looks down at herself, holding up her hands, and they… look… mostly normal, except white, instead of the colors of what she's feeling? Bright lines on the dim, unnaturally-alive shell of her arm's metal skin shine that way they do when she hasn't put herself into them enough to turn them on, but… She traces some lines inside one hand that she doesn't recognize with her other. "Huh. Those look like nerves."

There are holes in your soul, Adena! Toriel shouts. Fire, very jarringly bright green and without any heat Adena can see, flares in Toriel's hand, and she steps forward. Let me heal you!

"Uh, I'm… fine?" Adena says. "Anybody with 'ware loses essence, and, like, it sucks, but it's not something you can heal?"

Toriel steps forward, frowning, holding the spell in her hand out. We will see about that!

"Uh!" That sounds surprisingly threatening! Adena's eyes flick to the that's a healing spell, right? and it looks like a health spell, and it's the same as what she saw Toriel use when she healed her, but she pulls her magic up to counter it if she needs to anyway. "Don't hurt me?"

I will not, Toriel says seriously. The green fire spell flies out of her hand towards Adena. Touch this, and it will heal you.

Carefully, Adena reaches out and pokes the cold, magic fire with a finger, and it vanishes, and she suddenly feels very warm, but nothing really changes.

'Your blood cell count has significantly increased, Adena,' Alexa says in Adena's thoughts, which is, uh, good? And means this magic's definitely different than the healing Adena knows about, but not that different.

"...Uh." Adena waves her hand, still dim and covered in lines. "Yeah. You can't just heal this."

I… I suppose not, Toriel says. You… are not in pain, are you?

"No? I mea–"

｢–is how Mo–｣

Adena almost jumps and spins around. "Ghost person?"

Has my child done something? Toriel asks.

"Uh, no, when you did the–soul thing, I couldn't see or hear them anymore, but I just heard–"

｢–s this what let them hear me?｣ the ghost says right in Adena's ear.

"Uh, I can hear you," Adena says, looking around again and still not seeing where the ghost is at all. "Also, she/her."

｢Well, I guess it is,｣ the ghost says, still not… anywhere. ｢And you're getting my pronouns right, thanks.｣

What are they doing? Toriel asks urgently. You can hear them again?

Adena nods. "I have no idea, but, yeah, and ghost, you should go check if whatever it is works for your mom, because that would solve our problem!"

｢Okay, I'll tr–｣ And the ghost's voice disappears.

Adena shuffles her feet. "Lemme know if it works? I guess?" she says. "Cause I can't hear them anymore."

Toriel's eyebrows furrow. I do not– And then her eyes go from the red they are in meatspace to a very bright crimson, and she gasps. Oh! she says, eyes wide. Is that–Chara! I can hear you!

Well, that means it's definitely working… whatever it is. And Toriel's… starting to cry. Adena hopes they're good tears, and she also hopes she and her kid don't care when she goes and hides behind the chair to let them work through their shit without her getting in the way. Alexa, read to me loud.

----------
You shall obtain a human soul...
And a power beyond monster imagination.​

 

[FormlessAlien]

Koda sees the light of the Sprawlpath disappear as she steps out the door of the second crumbling skyscraper onto the old but unworn street. Everything's still dark, and the sky–she looks up, past the dim- ruined skyline–is still black and starless, leaving the flows of magic as the only light around.

Koda huffs unhappily and leans back on the part of the doorway that doesn't have any exposed rebar. "The fuck did you expect," she mutters to herself. "That's how it works."

It won't be safe to rest here, either, most likely. Monsters hang out in abandoned places in the outside as much as they do in the Sprawl. Which means, because Koda can't exactly make Wards on the fly strong enough to be worth the coins they're made with anymore what with being a Lightning Magical Girl, she's probably going another few days with no sleep.

And standing here's not doing her any good.

Koda reaches into one of the irritatingly few pockets on her uniform for her third Bronze of the night, kills its mint containment with a flicker of electricity, and lets its magic seep into her flesh. It should keep her going for… long enough, she hopes. She really doesn't want to start eating into her Copper.

And she's stalling. She doesn't want to start moving and fighting and hiding again. But she has to, or she'll die alone in this empty hellscape and nobody'll find her body.

"I wish I didn't ask for this," she says to no one as she pulls her exceptionally ribonny warstaff from its magnetic holster and steps away from the wall. But she did. So kicking that damn puuchuu off a roof would be kind of a dick move.

-----​

It takes what feels like hours, and avoiding half a dozen of those crystal zombies full of fucked up animancy shit, before Koda finds a building that's short enough and intact enough she feels okay getting up onto the roof to get a real look around this wonderful lightless hellscape she found herself in.

Back the way she came, past the skyscraper she got out into this place from, is… Koda blinks and lowers her warstaff's scope, and, no, unless she's hallucinating and her hallucinations are also being consistent, she didn't imagine it.

"…Where the hell am I that has ghost cities and a world tree?" she wonders out loud, partly so she can hear something that's not her footsteps or a crystal zombie groaning. "I knew I was lost, but this…"

…Going home stopped being an option a while ago, but it would've been nice if she could pretend for a bit longer…

Koda squeezes her eyes shut and shakes her head. "No thinking," she tells herself quietly. "Bad. Bad brain."

…She's on a roof. The zombies don't fly. Maybe she can be safe sleeping here. If she wasn't so fatigued, she could probably flash-step to the tree in a couple hours. And she'll be able to deal with shit better. She should… destroy the stairs, though. And set up an alarm.

"And that sounds like something I can focus on!" Koda says, and maybe she's talking to herself a little bit too much, but it's been days since she's seen somebody that didn't want to kill her and she's been keeping herself from collapsing by eating money, so she thinks she can be excused.

Koda squeezes her warstaff's grip tighter, walks over to the stairwell… building… box, whatever it's called, pulls the door open, and takes aim towards approximately where she hopes structural walls aren't. Then, she takes a minute to breathe in the magic around her like she learned to back when she was still human (and there is plenty of magic here), feeds the now incredibly lightning-aspected power that filters out of her soul into her warstaff's magazine, and incants "Forte!" as she pulls the trigger.

Appropriate to its name, her attack is very loud.

A thin stream of magic pierces straight through the stairs in front of her, the flight two stories down, and probably a few walls, and then the magazine dumps its power into that stream, and a bolt of lightning explodes out of the warstaff's focus crystal bright and loud enough that if it weren't for the safeties built into her Koda's pretty sure she'd be deaf and blind for minutes. Since she does have those safeties, though, the edges of her vision goes dark, and she feels a thump in her chest, and then there's a meter-wide glowing-edged hole where a lot of the stairwell used to be.

Koda's still not used to being able to do that, and it still makes her smile. "Domain of the gods schnomain of the gods," she says as she steps back from the cored out roof box whatever and looks for a good place to draw up a detection ward. She should be able to power it off of the ambient magic, since this place is… Uh.

She blinks. Wasn't the air here brighter? She's sure there was plenty of power to go around when… she…

"…Right." She just used most of the local magic to blow a hole in a building. "Well, I'm an idiot, and I guess I am burning some Copper. A worthy sacrifice, I guess."

Maybe tomorrow, she can figure out if this hellhole has any food in it. She's tired of going without that, too.

----------​

New work, here. For those interested,

Spoiler: the approximate CYOA build

Body: Average
Specialization: Lightning
Weapon: Ranged/Mystic (Dual Weapon)
Outfit: Elaborate
Power: Third Eye
Perks: Awareness, Dual Weapon, Absolute Direction, Eternal Style, Flexibility, Power Artifact (Oddball, coin minting), Gifted, Sorcery

The Power Artifact is from the Artifact Origin, and Gifted and Sorcery are bought with Gold. In the lore of the story, Koda was somebody who minted coins in the Overcity before becoming a Magical Girl, so she already had the artifact, and she had the Sight as a human, too. She was also trained in the kind of magic her sorcery is (rune-based stuff that can be powered by someone who's not hyperspecialized like a Magical Girl, or by coins, or by ambient magic), so her transformation into a Magical Girl was rather cheap as they go (she was not provided a Gold, and in fact used a portion of the money she had on her at the time for stat-boosting and the like), but that may or may not actually matter ever.

STR 4
AGI 9
VIT 4
MAG 16
LCK 4

Still need to come up with a title (and figure out where I want this to go. Maybe I should make this just Xenoblade 2 rather than a multiworld adventure, but if I go that way, I'll probably wanna rewrite the beginning of this to not be in Morytha. Or maybe I should rewrite out of there in any case). Partly writing this cause my other works weren't cooperating, we'll see how that continues.

Click to shrink...

 

[FormlessAlien]

"What?" I turn around. "What do you mean, they're—" and I freeze. "...What in the name of the Silver Moon did that beast do to your souls!"

'Guardian!' Luna snaps from her place on my shoulder. 'We can figure that out later! Right now, you just need to fix it!'

"How! I need to remove the thing's spell from them first, and I don't know if I can do that without killing them, especially with how it's holding them together!"

'You're right,' the Mau says unhappily. 'But we still can't hurt them, or let them hurt anyone else.'

Fingernails scrabble off of my shield without making any impact. They pose no risk to me, but unarmed or even lightly armed civilians would probably be overwhelmed. "I--I suppose that I know a few bindings." I twist my magic, leaning on my combat skin's preprogrammed spell-element library to fill in what I don't remember from my tutoring, and let a stream of silver light fold out onto the crowd of nearly-dead people. It wraps around them like a rope, and they freeze in place. "...This is familiar," I realize out loud. "Terribly. It reminds me of—" when I died. My throat closes around the words.

'...Yes. It is too similar.' Luna jumps off of my shoulder, padding over to one of the people. She wrinkles her nose. 'That magic is--Everything about it is wrong. And...' She smiles, ever so slightly. 'It's fading. Not quickly, but--" the echo of a spell reaches me "--Yes, your healing should affect them now that the caster isn't here to hold the spell in place, and the remaining hostile power should burn away within minutes once their souls are healthy.'

I sigh, and behind my visor, I smile tiredly. "Well, that's a relief." I twist my magic again. "Healing!"

A pulse of shimmering silver expands out from my outstretched hand, reaching into the souls of the people and guiding them back into holding onto their bodies, even as my binding spell drops. The glowing red of their eyes fades in an instant, and they fall to the ground, unconscious.

I hear sirens whining in the background.

"...Miss?" Naru's voice comes again, and I turn to look at her. She looks... scared. Incredibly scared. "I—" She goes quiet for a moment, shivering, eyes shining. "...W-what happened? Who are y-you? H-how do you know my n-name?"

"Naru, I..." I stop, looking down. The sirens are getting louder. "Luna, how dangerous would it be for me to tell her who I am?"

'Very dangerous,' the Mau says, 'though less for you and more for her and your family. The Dark Kingdom would likely try to get to you through them, once they realize that you are a legitimate threat.' Luna looks over at my best friend. 'There... really is not a way to stop that, if she knows. We lack anything like fortifications.'

"...Ah. They." I hiss a breath through my teeth, memories of my guard trying to hold back a hundred thousand maddened, red-eyed civilians flickering through my thoughts, as much as I wish they wouldn't. "Beryl would do that." I turn back towards my best friend and take a deep, deliberate breath. "Naru, I can't tell you my real name, or how I know you, but..." My fists clench, and I force myself upright again, looking my friend in the eyes from behind my faceplate. "By my duty as the Guardian of the Silver Moon, I will ensure that my enemies bring no harm to you." And I won't break that promise for anything.

"O-oh..." Naru whispers, her eyes wide. She just looks more afraid, which is not okay while I can do something about it. Especially when I am definitely the cause.

I walk over to her, folding my armor into a lower-profile, less aggressive form. The spiked foci on my vambraces fall away into spellspace, along with the plates of shimmering silver and red over my visor and the crystal wings at my back. "Everything will be fine," I say, in the calmest and kindest tone I can make. I kneel down, reach out to my best friend, and wrap my arms around her in a hug, trusting the fire of my magic to warm my combat skin enough to keep it from being uncomfortable and being careful not to use even a fraction of my strength. "Don't worry. You're safe. And, on the Moon, I'll keep you that way."

Naru looks up at my faceplate, missing my eyes, and her own tear up, and she sobs.

The sirens get louder. I rub circles on Naru's back.

'Guardian, the local authorities are almost here.'

"What of it!" I snap quietly over my shoulder, careful not to jostle Naru as she cries on my shoulder. "Can I not help m—Naru? I do not leave my friends and allies hurting, adviser, and if that causes problems, I will fix them."

'Idiot!' Luna hisses as I turn back to my task of holding Naru as long as she needs and wishing I could think to do more. I can feel the Mau's glare on my back. 'We've just talked about this! If anyone finds out that you care for her specifically for any reason, regardless of her knowledge of your identity, the Dark Kingdom will go after her, and I know you well enough to know that you will respond! Your stunt with that healing pulse earlier has already narrowed the search for places important to you, including your home, to at most a square kilometer area. I do not care if I am only an adviser! You will leave before anyone can gather the truth of what has happened here as anything more than a coincidence, you will leave no footage of this on the security system of this building, and you will produce no less than four other overcharged healing pulses at every corner of this city, equally spaced with your first, to disguise the first. I will not have my charge hurt by her own blockheadedness, especially in circumstances as dire as these!'

I take a breath, the fires of rage burning to life in my gut, and turn to glare down at Luna's tiny face. "You presume to—"

"Guardian," a quiet voice says right next to my ear. Even with the support of my combat skin and the Moon it takes me a moment to connect it to my friend's mouth. "Please... don't worry about me. You already s-saved me... Go and protect your family. I'll be fine, the police are almost here. They can help me find M-Mama..."

Frozen damnation, I am a thoughtless idiot! What is wrong with--I shut my eyes. "Luna, please tell me you know where her mom is, I—" I pause and make myself breathe deep, trying my hardest to calm down. It's… very hard to do that, here and now. "...I promise I'll leave once we've gotten her safe."

'The basement,' Luna responds instantly. I feel the echo of her spell a half second later. 'The door is unlocked. Open it, get down the stairs, bring her up here, untie her, and then take me and leave before you make your section of the city and your friend targets.'

"Alright." I sigh, standing and looking at Naru for a moment. "...I'm sorry that I can't stay."

"It's f-fine," she says, smiling a wavering smile behind the tracks of her tears. "I can tell that you want to help. Just stay s-safe."

I return her smile, though she can't see it, just standing there for a moment feeling guilty and glad. Then I turn towards the basement door, darting over to it and pulling it open—after turning the handle, unlike the front entrance earlier, I caught my mistake in time. I leap down the stairs, folding magic into my eyes, and a single healthy soul lights up less than five meters away. I walk over to it, and try to gather my words through a tangled mess of emotions for the millionth time tonight. "Miss Osaka, I'm here to get you out," I say as I reach down, grasping the binding spell wrapped around the soul with fire-wreathed fingers and snapping it. "The monster that put you here has been dealt with. If you'd come with me, I'll bring you to your daughter."

"...Naru!" she gasps tiredly. How long has she been trapped here? I've healed her body and soul, but I cannot do the same so easily with her mind, and I don't even have the time to try, curse this Dark Kingdom and their demons. She reaches up and grasps my offered hand, allowing me to pull her upright. "She's alright?"

"Physically, yes." Miss Osaka stumbles—I wrap a stabilizing hand around her shoulders. "She was just attacked by a monster, but I've healed the wounds it left." By this point, we're almost up the stairs. "Your daughter is... shaken up, though she's being very strong. I'm sure that she'll be okay."

"Thank you, Miss," Naru's mom says. I can hear relief thick in her words. "Thank you, thank you..."

"I'm only doing my duty as the Guardian of the Silver Moon," I tell her humbly, only half lying, as we clear the last step. "I do not deserve thanks for it, especially as I can't stay any longer. I need to leave to avoid making either you or your daughter a target of my enemies." I help Miss Osaka sit down beside Naru and straighten up. Luna leaps onto my shoulder, hooking her claws under my left pauldron. "May the Light of the Silver Moon bless you with Serenity."

Before either of them have a chance to respond, I fold my thrusters, wings, plates and blades back into native-space and leap, flying back out of the door as fast as I safely can. I immediately flare my wings, digging into the air and the ether to shift my momentum and fly up, stopping a dozen meters above the top of the tallest buildings. My vision snaps back into a perception of light, and I stare down at all the lights in the windows. The Tokyo Tower looms, gleaming, in the distance.

"Where do I cast, Luna?" My voice reflects my mind—tired, sad, and overwhelmed. I'm not a soldier. I may not know whether I'm a middle school student from Japan or the princess of the Silver Moon, but I know that much. I was only given my Guardian combat skin for self-defense, and the only time that I used it in combat, I was not close to strong enough to protect the people that I loved… but I won't let that stop me. I can't. I have that power now, even if I lack training, and I won't let anyone get hurt now that I can help it.

'Place one above Nanako-ku, one above the border between Toshima-ku and Kita-ku, one above Katsushika-ku, and one above Setagaya-ku,' she answers, and once again, I feel the echo of her spell a moment after she begins speaking. 'Put five minutes between each burst: we cannot make it obvious that we are doing this any differently than the first. You need to cast the first one as soon as possible.'

I straighten my shoulders, the silver fire in my wings brightening. "Thank you, Luna," I say, and I turn north and increase the power flowing to my thrusters by an order of magnitude.

In a second, I'm gone.

----------​

An utterly ancient chunk of words for an utterly ancient story of mine. I had it lying around, and I have about another chaptersworth, and though I'm not exactly... happy with these? they may as well be listed together with the bit I've already got on here. It seems, however long ago it was when I wrote this, that I was far too fond of '--' and '...' and it was awful. I've fixed some of that in the above (and some other things), but I still feel like it's not, uh, good.

e:Similar edits to the last chapter, though less of them, I think.

 

[FormlessAlien]

'You are going to need to find a way to get back to your home without being detected,' Luna tells me from her place on my shoulder. She's sounding a lot calmer, now. Maybe she's gotten used to flying at extremely high speeds? 'Unless you know any invisibility spells, we're going to need to use a glamor.'

I blink. "Um... glamor it is, I guess." It hadn't even occurred to me that flying back into my window would be a problem. What is wrong with my mind? "I only know a few minor notice-me-not effects, though."

'And you have an immense well of power,' the purple Mau responds rather tiredly. 'Your combat skin can help you calculate where to put it so that you can boost the effect to make you unnoticeable.'

"Right." Idiot! Idiot, Shining Light! You know these things, you used your combat skin to fill in for incomplete knowledge minutes ago! "...I'll do that." I reach into my combat skin, spinning up its computation systems to full and pulling them into manual control. The world around me suddenly falls into much sharper detail, and as I think about my glamor spell, even though I only barely remember half of the text on why and how it works, it's only the work of a second to reverse-engineer the rest. I immediately modify a few of the parameters, hum the song I probably don't need with this much assistance behind me, and start folding the whitelist. I... remove the reflexively-created section for Endyimon, and fold Luna's magical signature into it instead. The rest of the spell falls together just as fast, and it's the work of a moment to cast it. Then the computers spool down and I gasp. "...I doubt I'll ever get used to that," I mutter. Then, I look back at the Mau adviser. "Luna? How does the spell look?"

'Like an overcharged version of the spell you used to use to sneak out of the house,' the Luna says, and a memory returns to me along with more regrets I held when I k—when I died, and I flinch. She sighs. 'I'm sorry. It should work, which is the important thing. Just make sure not to break anything on your way back.'

"R-right." For what feels like the hundredth time tonight, I pick a course, push magic through my thrusters, and fly.

It's only the work of a minute to get back to my house and over to the window. It's the work of less than a second to notice that all of the lights are on and the window I left through is closed.

"Shadows, I forgot! My spell will have woken everyone up, and of course my family's noticed that I'm gone!"

'They have yet to contact the authorities,' Luna whispers from my shoulder. 'Just go in through the front door.'

"...Yes, okay. I can do that." Luna is amazing with information gathering spells. Maybe... Maybe I should wait, and—I realize what I'm doing, cut my thoughts short, and clench my fists. "I'm stalling. I'll just—I'll just do it."

I drop to the ground, spreading the force wide so that I don't make sharp bootprints in the grass, walk to the door, and pull it open. Three pairs of eyes immediately snap to look at me. Or, rather, the door that I just opened, because civilians wouldn't have even close to enough power to see me through my glamor. If they have any at all, I—I don't even know if humans are supposed to be like I—like we were.

I step inside, closing the door behind me and letting my combat skin drop out of space, the school uniform sans shoes that I never got around to changing out of yesterday falling back onto me out of my combat skin's automatic storage. "...I'm home" I call quietly as I drop my spell.

I'm met with absolute, crushing silence. My family is staring at me, universally with very wide eyes.

I look away, somewhere between embarrassed, guilty, and terrified. "...I can explain—"

"USAGI!"

A blond-haired missile slams into my chest, and I stumble back, mostly in surprise. "Shingo? Wha—?"

"You idiot!" he says. "When you disappeared with that glowy bubble thing, I thought—we thought you'd died!" He sniffs, arms wrapped tightly enough around me that I think if it weren't for how the Silver Moon's soul reinforces me it would hurt my ribs like it does my heart.

"...Shingo, I'm alright," I tell him, returning his frantic hug hesitantly. "I'm fine, you don't need to worry about—" And he pulls back, his expression a mix of a thousand different emotions.

"Never do that again!" my little brother shouts. His voice sounds terrible as it tears its way out of his throat. He must have been really worried, and it's all my fault, and his energy seems to drain out of him and he slumps. "N-never do that again... please..."

I can feel a shaky smile forming on my face as I pull him back into a hug. Something warm drips down my cheek. "I'll never disappear like that again," I whisper, my throat tight with emotion. "I promise."

We stay like that for a while, him angry at me or happy that I'm here or however he feels, and me feeling like desperately glad he still cares about me at the same time as feeling like an impostor in my own skin.

Eventually, with some shepherding courtesy of my parents, we find ourselves on the couch, and rather drained. I look up at my parents and sigh. "I... have some explaining to do."

"Yes you do, young lady." Mama says, her face as stern as her voice. "Quite a bit of it."

I feel the echo of a spell, and I go stiff in my seat, eyes darting across the room.

"Luna—"

'Usagi,' Luna interrupts, 'my existence is in the news, and neither of us is willing to modify anyone's memories.' She sounds rather resigned. 'There would be no chance of hiding your identity from your family even if we tried, especially with how you effectively appeared back inside the house without ever seeming to step through the door.'

"...Oh. Right." My shoulders slump, and I push Shingo gently off of me as I stand up. "Wait here for a moment, little brother. If your hand got caught inside my armor, it wouldn't go well."

He looks at me, confusion in his puffy eyes. "... Armor?"

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. There's no avoiding it. "...Here." And I pull my school uniform away again, immediately replacing it with the most minimal configuration I can fold my armor into.

Silver plates fall into place over my torso in a ripple of seventh-dimensional motion, followed shortly after by shining red and white crystalline panels at my sides and my throat. Gold-streaked silver blades fall into a protective skirt around my waist, and more silver ripples onto my extremities. Red flows down after it, protecting my joints and forming spines at the base of my boots. A ruby visor falls into place over the shining gold crescent at my brow, followed by a silver helmet. A second gold crescent shimmers into being at the top of the visor, and silver fire burns into being inside of the crystals across the entire suit. The instant it finishes, I reach up to the helmet, press the releases, and let it fall back away.

"I am the Guardian of the Silver Moon. I only found out tonight, and I'm... trying very hard to not have an identity crisis. I contain the soul and memories of Silver Light, a noble of the Court of the Silver Moon, and... I don't know whether I'm a reincarnation of her, or Tsukino Usagi is a reincarnation of me, and I feel—" I cut myself off, and look down at the floor. "I'm sorry, that's not your concern, I shouldn't trouble you with—"

"Stop," Mama says. Her voice sounds strained. "I am your mother, Usagi. When you have a problem, I am here to help." She steps forwards, towards me. "Do not even think that I won't help you when you're in trouble, especially when it's something so serious as this." She grabs me by the shoulders, not flinching at the silver fire burning under her hands like nearly everyone else does the first time they touch my armor. "I love you, whether you're some moon princess's reincarnation or not, you are my daughter and I love you."

I feel a sob building in the back of my throat. "...Mama—" My voice breaks, and my eyes feel wet. "...Th-thank you. So much. For being here. And you too, Kenji-papa, and Shingo..."

"It's okay, Usagi. We're here for you."

My chest is tight, and I feel tears fall down my cheeks. "Thank you!" I manage to say, with what control I have left of my voice.

And I break down in sobs. Here I am, Heir to the Throne of the Silver Moon, wearing the highest quality combat skin our engineers have ever designed, crying my eyes out into my mama's shoulder... I feel so inadequate. So small. And so, so grateful that my family's here to see me through it. Right now... some part of me is broken. I don't know if it's because I'm just a middle schooler who just got thrust into a world of soul-corrupting monsters and magical warriors, or because my last memory is of killing myself with Endyimon's sword... but I'll be alright. Because my family's here.

-----​

"I might have to go out and fight monsters again," I argue, my arms crossed over my chest.

"You will not put your life at risk again," Papa retorts, stare only hardening farther. "I will not have my daughter fight a war before she's even had her fifteenth birthday!"

"If I don't, people die!" I shout back. "Beryl's kingdom will either kill or corrupt the entirety of the Earth's human population! Just like—Just like she did to the rest of our solar system!"

"And you, on your own, can fight that kingdom?" he says.

"I have to try!" I barely notice when I stand up. "Earth's armies would lose any open war horribly without my support, and—"

"Then supply them! Teach them your magic! Just don't go yourself!"

"Even assuming humans are still enough like us to do it, learning to cast a spell at a combat-relevant speed takes years!" I shout. "And none of them are connected to the souls of any planets like I am, unless my soldiers somehow managed to pull the same resurrection trick that I did, at the same time--"

'Usagi—'

I whirl on the small Mau. "WHAT!"

'Your soldiers are reincarnated here,' she tells me in a tone of annoyed patience. 'And now. By design."

My train of thought grinds to a stop. "...What? By whose design?" I ask. "How do you know?"

'Empress Serenity used the Silver Crystal to push your and your soldiers' souls into the approximate time that Beryl would have an opportunity to escape the prison she put her in,' Luna explains. This only makes me more confused. 'I and one other Mau were placed in stasis by the same spell to assist in awakening them to power... though the instructions it gave me do not say anything on you taking on the mantle of the Guardian of the Silver Moon.'

"...Beryl is in a prison? Mother Serenity used the Silver Crystal?" I blink slowly. "...What happened after I died?"

Luna looks at me sadly. 'Your soldiers fell one by one to the Dark Kingdom's armies buying time for the Empress to use the Crystal. The solar system was already lost by this point, and the only other option was activating Saturn and letting her call the Silence. The Empress cast a binding on Beryl and all her armies, pulling them out of native-space and even spell-space and twisting the path out through time so that the only way that the spell would be escaped would be after waiting around ten thousand years.' Her words sound sincere, but also like she knows them by rote—perhaps like she's reading them from a script. 'She used the rest of her soul to send yours and those of your soldiers to the future, in similar locations and a similar time, in the hope that you would find a way to save what was left of the Solarens on Earth. I and my fellow adviser Artemis were set into stasis and instructed to awaken your soldiers and protect you and the Earth from the Dark Kingdom.' She sighs. 'I wasn't there, but that's what the spell tells me. Artemis and I were taking leave on Mau at the time.'

"...Oh." I feel myself droop, and I close my eyes against more tears. "I... Oh. H-how do we find my soldiers, then?"

'I've been searching for a few days, using low-profile magic, and you are the first person I've found to possess the soul of a celestial body.' She chuffs a sarcastic laugh, and I feel magic building up and folding in the space around her soul. 'Since secrecy is obviously useless, now, I can use wider-reaching, higher fidelity search spells. We should have any within this city located by this morning.'

"Good." I look down at the ground. "Will... Will they have overlapping memories like I do?"

'Probably.' I feel the echo of a minor spell. 'Celestial souls carry minds much better than mortal souls, and the Guardian combat skin's link system holds memories as well.' She jumps up onto my shoulder again, curling comfortingly around my neck. 'But this will be different than when you awakened. We know what to expect, now; we can help them figure out who they are.'

"Good," I say again, falling back to the couch. It creaks slightly under my armor's weight, and I wince. "Sorry, my armor feels like it weighs nothing on me..."

"It's fine," Ikuko-mama says, sitting down beside me as Papa goes back over to his chair. My little brother's already in bed, and if it weren't for the celestial soul inside me, I'm sure that I'd want to follow. "We're just glad that you're okay. We can always replace a couch, but we can't replace you, Usagi."

I smile widely. "Thanks, Mama... For everything. I love you all, so much."

My family smiles back at me.

-----------​

The other bit of this I had. Once again edited, though once again I feel it's not great. There were so many sighs here in the original draft.

Any more I write on this will have my current writing problems instead of my old ones, though, so that's something.

e:Edits like the others. Making things 'better' according to my current taste.

 

[FormlessAlien]

"Welcome back!" a human I don't remotely recognize calls, waving from the little roped-to-a-cart airship as I crunch through the last line of trees between me and the caravan. "Have fun?"

I make myself laugh, and put a smile on my face (which I'm maybe not doing enough, everyone here's human, they probly can't read tails) as I wave back. "Sure! Nothiiing went wrooong! At all!"

The human-I-don't-know laughs back, which is annoying, but it could be worse.

"That was quicker than I expected," Agatha says as she walks out onto the porch-thing under me.

"The road didn't turn that much out from under me, and it was only… uh." I look back over at the human-I-don't-know. "How long were we gone?"

"An hour or so, I'd say?"

I blink. "...Well, we really improved this thing's efficiency, then!" I look back down. "Right, only an hour going off-course." And we did all this in an hour. I flex the toes I couldn't originally control against the dirt, because I can, now, aaaand my claws sink in what must be half a foot, which means I have to start walking flat-footed now I'm on a road since I should try not to damage it, which, ugh, so I lose the most-of-a-foot of height from standing properly and walk over to the back of the caravan where we're supposed to be.

Agatha's gone from looking at me or the things around us to staring at the controls instead. "I… think you'll need to keep piloting for the rest of today," she says, gesturing to the many segmentations we added to the levers, which also have an extra degree of freedom almost universally, so I can control my legs more naturally. "These aren't suitable for use by hands anymore."

"...Well, one step backwards." I know I could do much better, if I were stuck in a hyper-tech post-apocalypse for a year, but as I am right now, I'll need to figure out whatever fiction-me was doing to make weavetaps out of lumps of glass and quartz, first. She used thing-knowers, right? Divination-things of some kind. But I don't know if they looked at the future, or if they did some kind of potential-reality thingy, or if either of those ideas are even practical, and I should probably design a way to externalize parts of my Array like she did, first, so I can actually experiment, and "I should maybe write stuff down. Um, do we have paper? That I could use? And maybe ink? Or some clay?"

"Will you be able to keep paying attention to the road while you do whatever you're going to with those?" Agatha asks, which means yes.

"I won't walk into the forest again, if that's what you're asking, but, uh. Probably?"

She stares at me, frowning. Krosp-person stares at me even harder.

"...Poke me if I go off-course?" I suggest.

"...Alright, that's good enough. Get down here where I can reach you."

-----​

"If I have to suffer, so do you," Krosp-person says, still standing on top of my notes and probably getting all sorts of dirt on them because I doubt he bothered to clean his feet. "Get going, see if they make you sing and dance."

"I mean, I can go people, but do I need to scrape you off of my papers first?"

"You need to go get the people in charge to make you do things. Until then," and Krosp-person decides to lie down on my notes, covering the whole humanscale papers with his now red-coat-wearing self, "I'll be right here."

I flick my fingers to gather some threads, pull them in in the way I'm approximately seventy percent sure lets my Array process them down into raw magic but there's still the possibility I'm totally misunderstanding the revelation fiction-me was supposed to experience, and make a simple wedge out of my motion-magic. "Scraping it is!" I chirp cheerfully, and then I shove the wedge between the papers and the cat and push, and he tumbles off to the side with a yowl.

"Hey!"

I shift my magic from an imaginary-thing to the usual formless momentum-shifter I use to move things, grab my notes, toss them into my passive-magic, and pull myself higher into the air with the magic I already had wrapped around me before the cat has time to do more than roll back over onto his feet. "Sorry, can't talk, I need to go suffer!" I say, and I wave at him as annoyingly as I can manage and make sure to put a smirk on my face to match the waving of my tail, and I move off in the direction he walked in from.

…Yeah, he did get dirt on this. Right on top of my soul anatomy diagram. Very glad I know what little Wishcraft I do.

I wave a hand vaguely, Will the paper to be clean, and watch spellfire wash over it, and my sketch winds up clean again, and I look back towards where I'm going and that looks like Master Payne! That's great, and my tail is no longer waving! But I guess, who else would be giving people jobs and making a cat annoyed. And he hasn't made me leave yet, but he might if I don't do things and I think I'm stalling.

If I wasn't fragile and made of meat, I think I'd just drop myself to get it over with, but I am fragile and made of meat, so I settle for just carrying myself towards the ground as fast as my motion-magic can move. "Krosp-person tried to hold my notes hostage so I'd come here and suffer?" I say, going for funny but probably missing it by a mile because I know me.

"Hmm?" Master Payne looks up at me, frowns, and then nods. "Ah. Miss Charririk. Yes, I suppose we should find a role for you. Firstly, though, I understand that the disguise you came to my circus wearing is governed by a single item?"

"It… Yeah, I have a cap of human guise." That I didn't realize utterly failed to make me look normal until literally four days ago because I'm terrible. "Why… do you ask? Um, sir?"

"It would be best if you were disguised while in any towns we visit, unless we can come up with an act that utilizes your true shape," he says, which is intensely obvious now that he says it, and so is the fact that the circus'll be going into towns because they need to perform for someone, and now I have a whole new thing to dread. "Would you care to show me how this cap of yours works?"

"Um." I reach up to my pack with part of the magic I used to scrape a cat off of my notes and then to grab those notes, pull my hat out, and set it on my head. "It's not. Complicated. Or very good."

"On the contrary, I would say that looks very good," Payne says. "Though, those glowing designs of yours are rather conspicuous…"

My tail twists despite me, and I push myself closer to the ground to hide it and hope again the illusion that's around me now doesn't put my feelings on my face on its own.

"Is that something we can make look fake?" the black-haired human to Payne's right asks probably-not-me, because Payne's shaking his head at the words.

"Not easily, I'm sure," he says, "and she doesn't seem to be a good enough actress to sell a particularly complex story, either. Perhaps we should keep her off the stage."

And that just makes me feel lovely, because being basically called dead weight by the person in charge of me being allowed here is fantastic, and yes I am panicking and I need to stop. I breathe in and unclench my hands. "I can–" Words. Words, I need words, what am I good for– "I'm a really effective multitool I can move things I can survive on less than a human I can hunt for myself don't make me leave please I don't wanna be alone."

The human who is currently nominally in control of my life gives me a look, which doesn't feel good because it looks like pity, but that's probably a good thing anyway. "You don't need to be on stage to stay in my circus, Miss."

"And we most certainly aren't making you leave," the newest light-haired-human, and aren't there a lot of those, says with a note I don't recognize in her voice, and aren't there a lot of those.

"Of course," Payne says quickly, and I let out a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. "I thought that was implied."

"Look at the child once and you can see that it wasn't, Payne," Yet-Another-Light-Haired-Human says.

"I'm ele–" I start to say, and then I remember how everyone here reacts to that, and also that pity from people in power is safety, and I shut the hell up. "N-nevermind."

Payne glances at Light-Haired-Human-Whose-Name-I-Don't-Know and then back at me. "I catch your meaning." He leans forwards, staring about six inches above my head where the eyes of the illusion wrapped around me are. "Miss Charririk, let me be clear. I am not allowing you to travel with my circus on the condition that you are useful, and I will not make you leave unless you prove yourself to be more dangerous than we here can handle."

"Which won't happen," Red-Goggles-Human (that's a lot more reasonable) says.

Payne nods. "Which won't happen."

"Okay," I say. I'm feeling… a lot. My tail probably looks like a pool noodle in the wind right now.

"…Perhaps we should discuss things later," Payne says. "Spend the rest of today relaxing."

I nod quietly.

"And… do tell Krosp to get to the horses, would you?" he says. His eyes twinkle. "I did assign him some work."

----------​

A bit short, but this has been sitting mostly done for long enough, and I want to get to some SCIENCE! on the magic end of things.

 

[FormlessAlien]

I twist my wrist, driving the point of my right heatblade into the kraata of the last Rahkshi in the squad sent to kill me. Teridax the Userper is finally learning to actually train his fragments before he sends them out, which improves their performance, but two dozen is still far too few to pose me a threat. Perhaps he's not trying anymore…

"…Ah, it doesn't matter."

I take a few steps away from the smoking mechanical shell of my last enemy and let myself fall onto one of the boulders that survived the fight. The weakness I feel means I've been injured somewhere during the fighting, and now that I'm not in the middle of the fighting, I can figure out where my shell's been holed and fix it… hopefully. My eyes flicker over the plates on my arms and chest, and all of them seem intact enough, and there doesn't seem to be any portion of myself leaking from my legs. None of that is a particularly good sign: it's much harder to work on what I can't see.

My eyes blink on an old reflex as a stream of my own essence floats past them, and I focus, dropping one of my heatblades in favor of brushing my fingertips over my face and trying to find the damage with whatever parts of my sense of touch still work after all these… years, decades, centuries, however long without a proper body or proper maintenance. One of my fingers slides over some sort of protrusion that shouldn't be on my left cheek (though I notice the sound of my claw scratching against jagged protosteel before I actually feel anything unusual), and the frown that feels everpresent on my face these days becomes a grimace.

"How in the name of the Builders am I going to fix this," I hiss to the empty air, pawing blindly at the cut, looking for any fragments that might've gotten inside and hoping I won't find any. "My Healing cannot touch these plates, I don't have any tools, and I have no way to weld protosteel without burning out my muscles!"

I flicker my power into shining yellow-blue healing anyway, to clear away any tears whatever cut my face might have caused in my facial muscles, and that does slightly decrease the rate at which my misty essence is leaking out of my mechanical body, though not enough. I shove myself back to my feet, keeping my power away from its reflexive bright white at my anger with ease born of, what, twenty-two thousand years of practice?

"—no matter how much it all runs together—"

and start pacing the scorched battlefield in the hope of finding something to scavenge.

"…might there be enough life left in any of the rahkshi husks to absorb them, no, I burned their kraana, they weren't carrying any fine-point welders, or any welders, maybe I could improvise one from the plasma casters, no, that's too wide-range, I'd need a magnet-cone to shape the blast and I can't make one of those easily from spring-steel swords, the raw iron shields are even worse, why did he send those, I could crush iron in my fist with barely any—" and I freeze mid step, eyes snapping back to a steel-blue rahkshi's crude shield as my words catch up with me. "…I could form that iron by hand."

I flicker my power again, this time into sandy-gold Shatterer, and a colorless wave of disruption slices one of the spikes off of the shield's front. Then I snatch the spike out of the air before it has the chance to fall, smash it mostly flat between my palms with a jarring screech of distressed metal, and shove the relatively soft metal violently against my cheek.

My neck snaps to the side, and I have to Heal again to fix the damage punching myself in the face did to my neck's tendons, but I can't see myself leaking out of my body anymore.

I huff a quiet laugh at my amazing intelligence and let myself fall again, this time flat onto the ground instead of to a seat on a rock. "Sometimes," I tell the empty air, "my crushing idiocy amazes even myself."

I spend a few more minutes just… lying there, staring into the darkened shell of the Matoran Universe at night. It's as beautiful as ever during a planetfall, with stars hanging almost motionless in their projections from the outside, the Red Star circling above in all its dimming glory, the distant forms of other worlds glinting in the faraway light of the local sun… It makes me wonder what it's like, out there, outside this enormous metal spirit we Makuta were charged to protect. The one the others want to kill.

There's… nothing left for me, here. I only survive out of habit, I think, or out of whatever instinct's left in the cloud of mist that took the place of my flesh. But out there, on other worlds? I read reports, before the Betrayal, on our first Planetfall, how rahi made of flesh go about their lives out there, with no great purpose, with no mechanical organs to maintain, with no Teridax to tear down everything they build…

…I wonder…

I let my power wander, almost lazily, into the shining, flashing yellow-red of Teleportation, flowing and flowing into it like an unending stream despite the fact that I very much have an end, until I feel so empty and Teleportation feels so full that it almost feels like I'm nothing else, and then I open my eyes, and I look at the stars, and I pick one, dim and far away as I can see, and I smile with false muscles set in a false face.

And I let Teleportation go, like the string of a bow.

-----​

I'm looking at an unfamiliar red sky, when I wake up. It's really a beautiful color, a backdrop of vivid Fear covered with scattered clouds of almost Hunger. The wind rushing against my skin is nice, too, it's the first time I remember feeling a breeze in decades, at least, though it's a little cold, I suppose. Maybe if I were falling a little slower, the wind would be nicer, and I could just go back to sleep—I blink, and frown, as something occurs to me.

Falling. Is what I'm doing.

That... might be a problem.

I shift my limbs and swiftly spin in the air so I can see the ground instead of endless, beautiful sky, and the ground is far too close, and I'm falling practically on top of a cluster of strange rahi, and there's no time so I spin my legs downwards and draw my blades and brace. The crash as I hit the ground is almost deafening, and I use the cloud of dust it threw up to buy myself enough time to flicker Healing to get rid of the searing pain in my legs and cloak myself in shadow. The strange rahi around me freeze, probably in shock, and then all turn their strange bodies and their unfamiliar weapons towards me, probably thinking I'm a bigger threat than whatever else they had been fighting. Despite the leftover damage to my plates from that horrible landing, they're probably also correct.

For a second or twelve or I don't know, there's nothing but silence as the two distinct groups of rahi wait to see if I'll attack first and I gather myself back together, but I don't have time to do more than harden my Shadow into a thin shield in the brief time between my bringing my thoughts in line and one of the single-eyed creatures breaking the silence by pulling the trigger on its weapon. Its projectile slams into solid Shadow with a crack! and, though it takes more effort than I would like to hold my shadow together enough to keep the attack from getting through, the projectile ricochets off of my shield in a flash of blue-white light. Another tiny ring of plasma impacts my shield, and I draw the shadow under my feet into myself to strengthen my defense, and yet another plasma bead darts through the air towards me, and another, and yet more, and all the aggressors have to show for their repeated fire is slightly less ammunition. And, all of those aggressors are of the one-eyed rahi.

I suppose I have found some enemies, then.

Their weapons are strangely shaped, for plasma projectors, and strange functioning; their bodies are mostly silver and black, and their muscles are for the most part exposed like an unarmored matoran's; and their heads curve gently back from their eyes like some sort of strange spineless rahkshi neck. And they are still firing on me, despite my lack of aggression, despite their lack of effect… I frown, and force myself away from the silvery-white of my Anger that my emotions lead me to into the more helpful golden-red of Fear, letting the color fill my thoughts and my power fill it in turn.

And I let that empowered fragment of Fear flow into my shadow.

"You attack, without attempting to discover your target's intentions," I say in a conversational tone full of the same empowered Fear as the rest of me.

As I take a step towards the one-eyed rahi, my Shadow flickers red, twists, and reaches out towards them with a dozen seeking tendrils. "That is an inefficient expenditure of your resources." I raise my swords from their low-ready at my sides and red-gold power condenses out of the inky cloud around me onto their edges.

"You attempt to kill this target, and draw another weapon onto yourself." In another two swift steps, I reach the first creature in the midst of its fighting retreat from the hunting edges of my Shadow, bat its weapon away with my left blade, and skewer it through the chest with my right. "That is an unnecessary increase in risk.

"You believe you have any chance in not utterly wasting the resources you unnecessarily expend? Any chance in not losing your soldiers to the last as soon as you aggress me?"

My blades move again, the one in the creature's chest tearing its way sideways out of the thing's torso in a shower of burning metal and boiling white blood and the other taking its head off of its shoulders with barely more than a twitch of my wrist just as it starts to scream, and I and my Shadow freeze. The weapons have stopped firing. One of the rahi is twitching uncontrollably, its single round eye nearly overtaken by the golden-red of my fear, and the rest seem barely better off.

Very deliberately, I shift my gathered Shadow enough that my enemies can see the smile growing on my face. "You had best hope you can run faster than I bother to chase, beasts," I finish in the same casual, conversational tone I started with, "or I'll take those pretty heads of yours for my throne."

The two less-frightened rahi are still somewhat rational, it seems, as they do the smart thing and turn to run, but the one whose eye shines with terror fires a panicked burst from its weapon at me. Not that any of its projectiles hit. By the time its finger begins to tighten on the trigger, I've already poured myself into the shining yellow-red of Teleportation, and I'm directly behind it, and my left hand drives its sword through where its heartlight would be, if it had one. Then, as the rahi's body begins to melt and sag on my blade, I blink the silver and red out of my own eyes, and my vicious smile turns into a frown.

"That… was a bit much, I think," I mutter, frowning at the mutilated corpses of the two creatures I killed in a mass of writhing, betentacled Terror as my racing hearts start to slow down again. "I don't even know what those things were…"

A sigh finds its way out through my lips as I turn to face the group that wisely chose not to attack me, flicking the half-molten viscera of the last one-eyed thing off of my left heatblade—and the helmeted rahi look like they are one wrong twitch away from firing on me like the group of dead and routed single-eyes. The one in white and pink, especially, as it has its finger solidly on what seems to be its weapon's trigger.

It occurs to me, finally, that I should probably shut down my blades if I don't intend on another fight. I immediately do shut them off, they cool themselves in the usual burst of steam, and I clip them back onto my sides with slow, deliberate motions.

"Greetings, rahi," I say in clear, formal Assembly, bowing formally at the waist in that courtly way I leaned… somewhen, long ago, my mind feels too scrambled to place it precisely. "I do not expect that you can understand me, as you are entirely unfamiliar to me, but I wish to convey that I will not harm you so long as you do not attempt to harm me."

A moment passes in silence, after I rise again, and then one of the rahi, the one with the red stripe along its arm, motions to the others in its group and steps forward. The group lower their weapons, and the red-armed-one starts to speak.

In an entirely unfamiliar language, as expected. I hold back a sigh.

----------​

Yet another old story I think could use more content. Makuta are pretty cool. Title's eh, but those are often a weakness of mine.

 

[loloudbeast]

So Miserix is somewhere in Geth space right now?