His first breath was dirty city air.
    For a while, he had done nothing. He had huddled in the alleyway naked and shivering, every part of his body alien and hypersensitive to the touch. Everything hurt. Every flare of light in his eyes (eyes, these were eyes), every rough breath in his throat (this is a tongue, these are lips, these are teeth), every shift of stiff limbs (these are arms, these are feet, these are hands). He shuddered and curled in on himself, crying and breathing raggedly, not even sure what he was afraid of, except for everything.
    He didn't know who he was. He knew things, he knew facts; the sky was blue, things that go up come back down, slingshots were a y-shaped bit of wood and a rubber band. He knew he was a boy. He knew he must have parents, because everyone had parents, but he had no idea who they were, and he didn't know where he'd come from. He didn't know his name.
    When he finally realized someone was watching him, it was because it'd taken so long to figure out what watching was.
    He shouted at it. He covered himself (like a girl, girls did this, you're a sissy boy) and shouted, 'Go away!' even though he wasn't sure until he said it just what the words were. Or what any words were.
    He recoiled at his own voice. The sound echoed violently in his head and he shrank in upon himself, so much that he didn't notice the thing coming up to him until it was already upon him, picking him up easily, his limp shaking little body that struggled to fight and couldn't. He was pressed against the thing's chest and he curled into it, dying for the warmth, shaking cold skin needing any sort of cover at all.
    There was no heartbeat. The body had warmth, it moved, but nothing beat in its chest. The boy knew facts and knew that things weren't supposed to live that didn't have a heart.
    But then he realized he didn't have one either.
    "What..." he began, and had to stop, because something was clamping his throat shut. He tried again, eyes burning without his consent, the creature's arms less comforting than before. "...What...'s happened to me...?"
    The thing didn't answer at first. It shrugged the hood off its head so that it could smile at him, red hair and streaked tattoos down its cheeks.
    "Happy birthday," said Axel. "Do you know your name yet?"
    And, Roxas found, he did.
    Axel was the first person that Roxas met, here, in the World that Never Was. He gave him something to wear, and something to eat, and took him to see a man called Xemnas, who was going to help him, the same way Xemnas helped Axel. But much, much more.
    Roxas couldn't walk yet, so Axel carried him, one hand at his waist. Axel was the first smell Roxas got used to, after his own. Axel was the first face that stopped frightening him, long before his own. He was the first one to get Roxas to laugh, the first laugh of his entire life; how much it hurt his chest, that silent cavity where something was supposed to be and wasn't. That absent thing, which felt like it came back, for small flashes and moments, when Axel smiled and meant it. A heart thudded heavier when it wasn't supposed to be there.
    Axel was the first one to say, "We're friends, right?", in a world where nothing of the kind even existed.
    And Roxas answered, "Always," because he still knew so very little.

    "You're kidding me," said a voice. "This is the keyblade's chosen one?"
    That voice...
    "Bit of a beanpole, isn't he. It's a wonder he can even hold the thing."
    Roxas knew that voice. After so long, it was second nature. There was no mistaking it. Clear and perfect as a bell, as if he was right beside him, as if he were breathing in his ear.
    "Kind of a pretty boy, too. And he's going on what, two years?"
    Roxas's eyes cracked open. White medical light flooded in.
    "Hello-hello," came the familiar voice. Something moved into his range of vision and blotted out the glare. "We've got ourselves a live one. Hey," the creature said, leaning close. He caught sight of pale skin, firebrand hair, bright crystal eyes-- "Can you hear me?"
    Roxas blinked up at him. So close. Their noses were nearly touching. He could feel the heat off his skin.
    "You're alive," he whispered, barely a croak.
    "Well sure, I'm alive. You were the toss-up there for a while."
    His eyes were stinging. He couldn't even pay attention to the words. Too near, too real. He could smell his breath, could hear every tiny resonance from the back of his throat, nuances he'd memorized like he would his mother's, if he ever had one.
    Axel. It was Axel.
    "God, I," Roxas stumbled on the words, eyes burning on the edge of tears. "I missed you."
    The redhead, to his surprise, began to back up, thin eyebrows arched. "Uh, hang on a second," he began. "I don't think--"
    "Shut up," Roxas ordered, dragging him back down.
    It was at this point that Reno's body, caught between thoughts of 'holy fuck there's a stranger kissing me' and 'holy fuck there's a keyblade master with his tongue down my throat', decided the best course of action was to simply lock up. Of course, after the first few seconds of passionate contact, it was fairly apparent that this wasn't going to go over. For one thing, the keyblade master had sat up, grabbed two bunches of his shirt, and pinned him squarely on the observation bed.
    Reno tried to mumble out a mild protest. All that got him was his shoulders being pressed harder into the mattress and a knee wedged very effectively between his thighs.
    For his part, Reno's brain decided the best response was to just spread his legs and go with it. Hey, what did he care if the keyblade's chosen one really knew what he was doing?
    Around this time, however, unbeknownst to the young Chaser, something was happening in the keyblade master's head. Namely, his real consciousness had finally woken up. And very nearly had a heart attack.
    Later, Reno would describe it like a cat suddenly going berserk on his face.
    "What are you doing?!" the guy was shrieking, flailing and scrambling off Reno's body in a fit. "This is my body! Not yours, mine!"
    Reno blinked up at him. "Um...?"
    "And with a boy!" the keyblade master continued, eyes wide and wet with nausea, both hands clapped over his mouth. "You kiss boys!"
    Now that was just crossing the line. "Hey, buddy, in case you weren't paying attention back there--"
    "Oh, not you!" he snapped. "Can't you see I'm--" He paused. "...I've been talking out loud, haven't I."
    Reno nodded. Slowly.
    "Oh."
    Pause.
    "Hi."
    "Hi."

    Cid once tried to explain to Cloud just what the metaspace was. At the beginning of time, he said, there was this big explosion, that jettisoned septillions of microscopic particles into the universe, that aggregated and became jetstreams and eddies and currents, or accumulated further and turned into space rock. The few largest clumps gathered up enough matter to grow into a star, a world. Once a star was born, the stardust nebulae surrounding its surface triggered storms and massive weather changes, sparking mutation in inorganic material, leading to the electric thread of vitality known as life.
    After billions of years, organisms germinated from tiny bacteria to full-fledged creatures, multiplying and diversifying as they went. The stars multiplied and diversified as well, splitting with the tides to form new bastions of life. It's the theory to explain common roots of origin, anyway: the rise and fall of creatures in the archaeologic record is demonstrably the same in virtually all of the enlightened worlds and a number that don't hold such a title, so clearly some sort of common beginning is at play. At a certain point in history, there was no genetic difference between folk like Cid Highwind or (he hated to say it) Merlin, or even between, say, Sora and King Mickey.
    The time of separation of worlds was indicative by similarities between them. Vastly unique worlds like the Land of the Dragons and Radiant Garden definitely suggested an earlier departure than, say, Twilight and Traverse Towns, which possessed such a similar genetic and architectural stock. The wearier the world traveler was, the more resonance you started to feel between worlds: after a while, you could swear blind that you had already seen these cities, talked to these people, even been annoyed by these same problems.
    Cloud had only been here half an hour and he already hated Manhattan. The people were dirty and uncouth, the law enforcement were giving him a particularly hard time about the sword, and the technology here was so primitive he feared he was never going to find the materials to repair his ship.
    It was nearly nightfall as well. Cloud was never particularly bothered by night, but he really didn't feel like spending one in a city like this. At least when Fenrir was parked in an alley three miles away.
    He had lost the signal just minutes before landing. Given the breadth of the world there was every chance gravity hadn't picked it up at all, or it had expired before reaching the surface. Not that it really mattered, because if he couldn't get his scanner working he wasn't going to find out anyway.
    "Listen," he said angrily, hands palms-down on the counter, seeing the dealer's eyes drift to his sword again. "I need an eye-wire thirty-six model delta cable with male-male responder jacks. Can you help me or not?"
    The dealer's thick lower lip, the only one visible through the mustache, moved with the effort of thought. "You got some ham radio project or somethin'?"
    It was a little-known fact that Cloud Strife's glare, narrowed enough, could melt solid steel.
    But there was no point. This man couldn't do anything for him. This entire city couldn't. He needed gummi technology, and by the look of it this city wasn't going to develop that for another two, three hundred years. In the meantime he was alone and friendless, getting stalked by police, and a guy on the street corner was trying to sell him something that could only in the loosest sense be called food. His PHS wasn't getting any service, the keyblade master was apparently long gone, and by the time he got out of here everyone at Radiant Garden was probably going to be dead.
    So this was Shit Creek without a paddle. He'd always wanted to visit.
    Cloud left the electronics shop out onto the twilight-drenched streets. The sidewalks were still busy, but thinning quickly. He had heard rumors of some sort of local menace, probably the tiresome local variety; if there was no dimensional breach afoot there was no reason for him to get involved.
    He retraced his steps back to the alley where he had left Fenrir. It was untouched. Either it had a residual shield functioning or even a heap of Chaser scrap metal was menacing enough not to cross.
    He settled into it and did another diagnostic, then a manual survey of the parts. Maybe he had overlooked something. Maybe a little more Cid-esque ingenuity was called for than he had previously mustered. Unless he was prepared to be in for the long haul and make himself a nice pair of coconut radios or whatever the local savages did to pass the time here, he was going to have to get creative.
    Cloud was halfway through counting the recyc tubes by color when a sound overhead made him stop. He jerked his head skyward, but there was nothing. Just the last of dusk fading to evening. Nights, it seemed, loomed here.
    Something very large had made that noise. No doubt the local problem. The cute thing with local problems being, Cloud found time and again: they almost always turned into his problems.

    A boy watched Riku puke his guts out in an alleyway for a good ten minutes before asking if he needed some help.
    Riku smiled at the kid, with that perfect twisted grin he'd gotten down so perfectly. "I'm fine. Go home or something."
    The kid shifted awkwardly. Apparently he didn't want to miss the entertainment. It seemed watching junkies going through their first major fits of withdrawal nausea is what passed for Saturday night prime time around this place.
    "Seriously," Riku told him. He was maybe thirteen. "Scram. Find someone else to poke with a stick."
    "So didja do anything?"
    Riku squinted at him. The vertigo was peaking again. "What?"
    "You're like a crazy person, aren't you? Did you like break out and rob a bank? Didja do something bad?" the kid asked, eyes wet with excitement. "They come for you at night, the bad ones. That's what they do these days."
    "Who comes for you?"
    The kid stiffened.
    "Come on," Riku prodded. "Who comes for you? Police? What?"
    "Nuh. It's the..."
    He stopped, hearing footsteps clapping down the adjacent alley. A boy of around the same age came quickly to a halt next to him.
    "You're still here?" the kid puffed. "Come on; Ma says we gotta get inside."
    The first boy didn't think twice about this suggestion. He nodded hurriedly and backed away from the head of Riku's alley. "A-anyway," he said. "I guess I'll see you around if you don't get eaten or whatever."
    "Hold on," Riku said, screwing up his concentration now. "Have you seen a pair of kids, around my age? One's a girl named Kairi, she's got red hair-- The other's a blockhead named Sora; you'd know him if you saw him--"
    The boys shook their heads. "Sorry," said the first kid, in that 'I don't care and I'm running away now' voice. Which is precisely what he went and did, his brother trotting behind him.
    Riku sighed. He leaned his forehead against the brick. It was cool and sweaty, uncomfortable against the skin, but he couldn't bring himself to budge. It was calming, in its way.
    He didn't know where he was. He didn't know how he'd landed here, or even how he must have survived the fall. The last thing he could remember was the mayor's boat shattering under him, and the roar of that... thing... catching them up from behind. He remembered he'd lost sight of the others, and there had been a feeling like perpetually falling, not up or down but still falling, numb and weightless. And then he had shown up here, bruised but alive, sick to his stomach and getting the shakes really bad, in a massive city he couldn't begin to recognize. And totally alone. Again.
    Almost alone. But Xehanort wasn't the best company even at the best of times, and especially not when Riku was lost, desperate, and a long way from himself.
    ~Ignore them,~ Xehanort murmured behind Riku's thoughts. ~You don't need those brats for friends. You're far too strong for the likes of them.~
    Oh, get a hobby.
    ~I cannot,~ Xehanort reminded, reproachfully.
    What I need is to get my bearings, Riku decided, forcing himself to stand upright. If there's a way onto this world there's a way off. If it's part of the Allied Worlds then I just need to find the Embassy.
    ~This is not an Allied World.~
    Then what is it?
    ~It is...~ There was a rumbling in the back of Riku's mind, as if from a breath of concentration. Or just mulling over having to actually contribute something. ~...A very hostile world, once the sun sets.~
    And then what happens?
    Overhead, there was a flap of large, leathery wings.
    Riku started, heel-stepping back into a puddle and swinging out his hand, Souleater flashing into form in his grip.
    He stood, sword out, ears tingling waiting for the sound to come again. But it didn't.
    Riku untensed. He relaxed his muscles and swayed, pressing palm against his aching brow.
    You're funny, you know that? he thought bitterly. A real first-rate comedian.
    It moved so swiftly Riku couldn't even detect it. One moment he was standing; the next he was being contorted and pinned against the wall, a strong hand wrenching the sword from his grasp and a jagged knife pressed to his throat.
    No, not a knife. A claw.
    "Just take it easy there," rasped a graveled voice, hot breath bearing down on his neck. "Don't want you to go and strain yourself."
    You, Riku told Xehanort, need a better warning system.

    The Great Maw moved languidly through quadrant alpha space, sluggish and clumsy in this new viscous vacuum.
    It was not accustomed to tugging like this, as though wading thigh-deep in water. The port officials assured locals that this was just a passing thing, that the briny quality of nothing was just the result of a far-away solar flare, and in the mean time local businesses were encouraged to make a profit on the high quantity of debris suddenly coming into the LSP.
    The Great Maw, a detachment of the Montressor Salvage Authority, was the top scuttle in its quadrant. It crewed fifty-six men, over half illegal registrants, with wages paid based on the value of their daily spoils. There was no trouble making a profit these days, with artifacts drifting in from all over the galaxy, but that didn't mean the going had gotten any easier. Sluggish seas aside, piracy had rebounded in earnest, and just because you were the first to pick up a bonnie haul didn't mean you were the one that was gonna keep it.
    Jim Hawkins was a dweller from planet-side, barely sixteen and despairingly wayward. He was not going to keep this job very long. He didn't keep any job very long, much to his mother's despair. On the Great Maw his delinquency was further inspired by his disambiguation partner, a fraudulent registrant calling herself Annamaria.
    Annamaria didn't let Jim get away with anything. She was nasty, she was strict, and she played dirtier than even he could. If he pocketed one thing, she pocketed six, and the one that he'd stolen, when she turned him over to the supervisor. If she owed loyalties to anyone, it was definitely never going to be him.
    She said she was scraping wages to buy a ship, seeing as "that worm of a scalawag" had run off with her boat. Jim never found out just who the scalawag was supposed to be, but he set himself up in advance to resent him. There were so many other, nicer partners he could have had for this gig; it seemed unfair that he should be landed with a piece of work like Annamaria just because some good-for-nothing brigand out there had gone and gotten ahead of himself.
    Sorting salvage was a tedious job, but the spoils were better than being part of those crews out there indiscriminately shoveling things into cargo. The sorter's job was to catalog, tag, and roughly appraise debris. All three tasks got picked up in fairly short order. Precious metals stayed, trinkets went. Antiques could be carbon- or potassium-dated with a small swatch on one's utility belt. Life forms went to the incinerator. Great Maw was in the business of profit, not humanitarianism. "Humans" were an outmoded concept anyway.
    "Slim pickings this month," Annamaria muttered, digging elbow deep into a pile of radioactive scrap. "No gold nor silver. How's a woman sposed to make a livin'? I ask you."
    She wasn't really. Jim by this point had learned to ignore her.
    "Here's some twenty-fifth century plastimetal," Jim offered, holding a shard under his scanner. "Not our twenty-fifth century, but anyway."
    "Gummi?"
    "Probably came off the hull of a ship. Hey, this is nice! Some beech wood!"
    It was in hefting the beech planking onto the conveyor belt that Jim uncovered a small, crumpled feathered thing that, shocked awake, began to fidget and shriek uncontrollably.
    "Who? Who? What? Where am I?! What?!"
    Jim poked the scrawny bundle. It screamed back and batted him with a wing.
    "We got a live one," he said unhappily. Wastrel he might have been, but he never really enjoyed putting critters through the incinerator. "Wonder what it is..."
    "S'an owl," Annamaria observed, scooping it up into her hands. It was a tiny thing, ruddy brown with blinking huge eyes, that yelped at being touched and tried to fly away without success.
    "Mechanical?"
    "Naw. Hundred percent feather and blood. Hoi, izzat you talkin' there?"
    "Release me!" it shrieked. "Unhand me right now or I'll, I'll--"
    Jim perked up. Proof of sentience was usually a loophole out of the incineration rule. He didn't see how his mother could object to a screeching owl for a pet.
    Well, he could. But a screeching owl that bit Annamaria's finger nearly clear off her hand was a pet he was willing to crusade for.
    "Absolutely ruddy not," Annamaria snarled, holding it out of his reach. "Little boys should mind theirselves."
    "Cut me some slack, you stupid Roaquizerian blundle-switch!"
    "This thing burns or I'll give you a right ding around the ear yer grandchildren will smart from."
    "Help! Helllp!" the bird was screaming. "Merlin! Sora! Assistance would be very much appreciated in the immediate sense!"
    On Jim's sorting berth, a pile of crystallized sea brine shifted. Something coughed.
    "Wha?" croaked a voice.
    The sorting partners froze. They turned.
    "Whozere?" the pile said, coughing again.
    Annamaria and Jim exchanged looks. Neither had had much experience with sentient crystallized sea brine.
    Jim leaned across his sorting berth and gave the thing an experimental prod. The pile shuddered. As they watched, the top of the mound cracked and split, revealing the crown of a red-haired head.
    Kairi pushed herself out of the mound of sea salt and blinked, eyes stinging, into a new and alien world. The newborn chicken comparison was more than a little appropriate.
    When she managed to focus on the bird caught in Annamaria's grasp, however, it was less than a second for Kairi to be on her feet.
    "Let-- Let Archimedes go!"
    "M'sorry, lass?"
    "The bird!" Kairi shouted, calling the eye of twenty sorting pairs from across the room. She pointed a finger authoritatively. "Let go of the bird or-- or you're going to regret it!"
    Jim had other matters commanding his attention. "...She's... she's got no clothes on," he whispered up to Annamaria, as though seeking confirmation.
    His partner rolled her eyes. "Listen here, miss," she told the bedraggled chicken-y thing who was, as Mr. Hawkins had observed, not presently of the clothed persuasion. "Yer not presently offerin' us much of a whotchacall argument."
    "And you've got no clothes," Jim contributed, like a child who just can't get over the marvel of a newly-learned fact.
    Standing on the sorting berth, wet, salt-pruned, and with skin looking like a kindergartner's patchwork Valentine's Day project, and suddenly aware of all these particular facts, Kairi, Princess of Hearts, flushed the exact shade of her hair.
    Afterward there was a bit of an incident with a keyblade, which will not be discussed at length here. Jim did not end up getting to keep the bird, though.

    Roxas was restless. The guy clearly looked like Axel, sounded like Axel, tasted like Axel, smelled like Axel and even readily spread his legs like Axel, but it was definitely a different person. The facial markings were different, for a start. The hair was cut different. He was about four years too young, too.
    The theory that began to seed in the Nobody's thoughts wasn't permitted to germinate. Sora had other questions, and as the owner of their shared body, he got to ask his first. Being totally repressed and in denial and beholding of strange notions about saving oneself for one's true love, these questions had absolutely nothing to do with when, where and how much. Roxas was terribly miffed.
    The boy's name was Reno. He seemed to be around Riku's age, but he spoke like a jaded twenty-something with a shitty night job. He had lanky thin wrists and a prominent adam's apple and a classically beautiful face, or what would have been classically beautiful if he had happened to be a girl. He spoke deferentially to Sora when he asked the crucial not-somehow-sex-related questions, like where Sora's friends were, where Sora was, and what was going to happen now.
    All of which, somehow, despite every rational law in the universe, never managed to broach the question of 'hi, hello, top or bottom?'
    Give it a rest, Sora thought finally. Or was Namine just sort of a rebound thing?
    ~Go to hell. Y'know, sometimes it's like you think you're the only one in the universe who's allowed to like more than one person.~
    I don't like more than one person!
    ~You're not fooling anyone. Actually, you're fooling negative amounts of people. Every denial is convincing someone else it's really true.~
    Say one more thing and I'll sing 'It's A Small World After All' in my head until next Wednesday.
    ~I can control some of your small muscle groups, you know. And your digestive system.~
    You fucked Axel! Axel!
    ~Through the mattress. And he loved it.~
    Oh my god, you're sick.
    ~No, I'm healthy and adjusted. You're just a fucking prude.~
    Reno peered at him. "If you're still sick we can do this later."
    Sora refocused. "Hnh?"
    "You were out in the vacuum for close to five minutes before we got you in the airlock. It's normal something like that should fuck your system up something royal."
    "I feel fine," Sora lied.
    Reno, to his credit, responded to this with an arched eyebrow. He leaned back on the bed, arms crossed. "Whatever. We'll have our medic look at you later. You know the whole schtick about contamination."
    Sora didn't, but he said nothing. That was one common theme with this Reno kid: he kept mentioning stuff as though Sora should know about it. Which wasn't a new thing in his life (Riku wasn't totally unjustified calling him a numbskull), but there was a feeling in the back, not-Roxas part of his head that was making him feel extra guilty this time. Because, well, it concerned him.
    "Tell me," Sora said, for a change of subject that mattered. "What's happened to Disney Castle?"
    Reno shook his head. He had long, pale eyelashes, Roxas couldn't help noticing. "Our news is a year old, just the same as yours. We got a bit of radio contact after departure but it was so routine you could swear the war wasn't even happening."
    "The King mentioned an enemy."
    The Chaser looked uncomfortable at that. "We haven't heard much," he told Sora, as a caveat, "but the idea Tseng got was they were world eaters."
    Sora's brow knitted. "Sounds a bit familiar."
    "You mean the outbreak from two years ago? No, they're not stealing hearts. They're just..." Reno grappled with some abstract idea in his head, waving a hand. "...Hollowing them out from the inside."
    It was Roxas, maybe. Something wrenched in Sora's stomach and he lowered his gaze, massaging a sticky forehead with his hand.
    "Nice mental picture."
    "The thing no one's able to puzzle out," Reno went on, "is where the hell you've been."
    "It... it's not my fault," Sora struggled out. The nausea was rising into his throat now. "I... we tried."
    "Who's 'we'?"
    Sora lifted his head to look at him. The image was blurry. Just a smear of cherry-red hair and bright blue eyes, abstract colors like they were scribbled out in frantic crayon.
    He opened his mouth to say something. The only thing that came out was vomit.
    He fell, hitting his side hard on the cold mental floor, puking and lurching, coughing violently, clutching at his sides like they might split.
    "Oi!" the Reno boy yelped, kneeling beside him. He got him round the shoulders and managed to heft Sora off his side, onto the Chaser's knee. "You idiot! I told you to take things easy!"
    "It-it's n-nothing," Sora managed, through clenched teeth. The floor looked like it was melting. "It's just-- just the drugs-- Give me a minute--"
    Reno shook his head. "Moron. I'm getting the medic." He began to pick himself up.
    It was Roxas that took control of Sora's arm and shot out with a hand, catching Reno by the wrist before he could rise.
    "Don't," he, one of them, anyone, struggled out. "Don't go."

    Xian Tseng had expected to meet the keyblade master formally on the ship's bridge. He had summoned up the entire crew for this purpose, had them comb their hair and smooth the collars of their jumpsuits, even got Biggs and Wedge to clear away the dirty dishes and toy dinosaurs from the navigation console. It was a big moment, after all.
    He stiffened like a steadfast tin soldier when the doorway opened, barking an atten-HUT! like the squad had not had to pull off since their training. Then, immediately faltered when a nervous red fluff ball poked its head in.
    Ten minutes later, Sergeant Xian Tseng and a special detachment of first section, Echo Platoon, Juliet Company of the Third Battalion --namely, Elena the ship's medic, Irvine the good cop, and Beatrix the bad cop-- emerged through the medbay doors to the sight of a crumpled, slightly rattish keyblade master right in the thick of withdrawal shakes and metaspatial pressure sickness.
    Reno, getting out of the way so Elena could do the actual medical work, was able to furnish Tseng with the kid's name, world of origin, and favorite flavor of toothpaste. No one speculated how that last bit of trivia had come about. That was just Reno for you.
    "The funny thing was, he was real friendly just before that," Reno began. Tseng told him to quit while he was ahead.
    Elena got the right cocktail of sedatives into Sora's system to neutralize the shakes, then got to work on his detox, on Reno's word that the kid was probably coming down off of some heavy drugs. People usually deferred to Reno's judgment on matters such as this as well.
    "Sora. Can you hear me?" Elena said, lifting the boy's eyelids one at a time to check dilation. "I'd like if you could tell me what you were taking."
    The boy's voice was hoarse, stubbornly so; like he was struggling to speak clearly and didn't understand why he couldn't.
    He listed names. Lots and lots of names. Stuttering them off from rote because the words were so ingrained in his mind, or maybe some other part of him was summoning up the information he himself had forgotten.
    Elena, who had expected to hear a small mutter of slang or, at best, something like "everyone else was doin' it," looked disconcerted.
    "Those are primitive antipsychotics," she told the sergeant, standing upright. "He is, or at least he was being treated for schizophrenia and disassociative personality disorder."
    The crew, who were mostly used to Elena speaking when she needed the rules of poker being explained to her again, took a moment to soak in this information.
    "He's insane," Tseng deducted.
    "I'm not," Sora argued, coughing. "You don't understand."
    "He was doing fine with me before," Reno pointed out.
    "Sir, he is from one of the unenlightened worlds," Irvine reminded, coming to his friend's defense. "According to reports three-one-four's had a history questioning the reality of his experiences. You know that's common in keyblade masters that get dragged in without much training. It's possible his home world just didn't accept his story."
    "It's against protocol to share extraworld experiences with unenlightened worlds," Tseng said severely.
    "Sir, he doesn't know anything," Reno insisted. "Really doesn't know anything. He didn't even know who the Chasers were."
    "If that's the case," Tseng said sternly, addressing the private full-on now, "what proof do we have he's the keyblade master at all?"
    "Sir, the Cricket Reports--"
    "Enough, Kinneas."
    Beatrix stepped closer to the medical bed. "Tseng's right," she said. "We sustained major damage to two of our Waverers, getting into that storm." She leaned close to him, breasts hanging pressed against the material of her jumpsuit. "You, child. Sora, was it? Prove it," she demanded. "Prove you're the keyblade master."
    "Corporal, for Odin's sake--" Reno began.
    "No," she said sharply. "If you picked up the wrong kid there's every chance you just ruined the entire mission. Did anyone remember to put a trace on those other two signals? Well?" she added to Sora. "Are you man or mouse, you terrible little worm?"
    "Croissouix," Tseng cautioned.
    Sora blinked up at her with watery, glazed eyes.
    "Fuck's sake, Beatrix, leave him alone," Irvine barked, moving to pull her away.
    She resisted. "I know you can hear me, runt! Do you realize in whose presence you are in? We are Chasers! We are on a top-priority mission from the King himself to find the three hundredth and fourteenth keyblade master, the one thing in the entire universe that can save us. And you, you little cretin, are wasting our time!"
    "Move," said Sora.
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "You're pinning my arm. Move."
    Irvine Kinneas, human crowbar, took the liberty of edging Beatrix off the side of the bed.
    Free to move, Sora raised his right arm off the mattress. The arm shook visibly, twitching so hard it seemed for a moment that the boy couldn't even hold it, but he persisted. He flexed his fingers and spread his palm wide.
    In all their lives, none of the soldiers in that room had seen what they did then.
    It began as a sound, first, a sort of hum at the base of hearing, and then one by one the particles of the air in front of his hand lit and spun, living charged photons swirling and collecting, aggregating into streaks, curls of light. It swelled as a flash and expanded in waves in all directions, hitting the edges of form --handle, guard, bar and teeth, the lace of the chain-- and fattened, filled out. It appeared larger then life for a strong solitary moment, as if the object had been somehow pasted into the world for a second before time assimilated it.
    Beatrix, arm still in Irvine's grasp, took a step back. Everyone else did too.
    Sora, vision still blurring at the edges, didn't quite realize what he was seeing until it was almost finished. The Chasers, all of them, even Reno, were on their knees, bowing as samurai to a lord. Like knights to a king.