Kairi sat cross-legged, keyblade balanced on her knee as she polished away the last smudge of blood. She was sure she hadn't beaten him that badly, but the man had bled so terribly much. She was sure no apology was going to be enough to have Mrs. Hawkins forgive her the state of the inn.
    Her seat heaved under her and moaned. She tapped his flank with the keyblade's teeth.
    "I already healed you, so you can quit your griping."
    Namine was resoundly impressed by the whole affair. She was taking credit for most of it, too, but Kairi supposed she could begrudge the girl a few things. The afterglow of a first victory --her victory, all hers!-- was warm and tasty all the same.
    Of course, it was likely Jack Sparrow had gone easy on her the entire time, or at least been distracted by her curvy bits, but that was a matter between him and Miss Annamaria, if Kairi had the correct understanding of their relationship. They denied it vehemently when she mentioned it, but in the end she was the one using Captain Jack Sparrow as a cushion while she polished her keyblade, and no one was going to force the matter.
    Archimedes, burrowed in happily (quite happily) between her breasts again, voiced no opposition whatever when Kairi announced her Plans. After all, she declared to the room at large, she had sworn to her boys once before that she was sick of being the one left behind, and if no one else was going to get things rolling, she damn well was. And they were damn well helping her.
    "Do we have an understanding, Mister Sparrow?" she asked, tapping the knob of the keyblade's tip on the floorboards to hear it sing.
    The pirate fidgeted in protest. He growled, "That's Captain SpaAAGGGKK.
    "...Right you are, miss."

    Riku had faint memories of what happened after he attacked. He recalled the feel of the keyblade under his hand struggling against the air as he swung, and the tremor that rose up through his arm when the blade hit home, and then the images fell apart.
    The next time he woke up, he was lying on a medbay stretcher with a dimmed observation lamp hanging over his head, and the swordsman was there too, bruised and bandaged and scowling while he changed the youth's dressings.
    There was that toy cat again. It was sitting on the blond's shoulder, swinging its feet while the swordsman worked.
    "Now, again," said the cat. "Repeat after me. 'This boy is not an enemy.'"
    "'This boy is not an enemy,'" the swordsman muttered sullenly.
    "'I have no business killing anyone who isn't my enemy.'"
    "'I have no business killing anyone who isn't my enemy.'"
    "'Just because someone looks for all the world like my arch nemesis does not mean they necessarily are.'"
    "'Just because--' He's awake."
    "No, Cloud, now what did I sa-- Oh! Ohh!" The cat leapt down from the blond's shoulder onto the stretcher, leaning down close to Riku's face. "Good morning good morning good morning! It's another beautiful day in the Village! How are you feeling, son?"
    Riku pinched the bridge of his nose and grunted. "This is your idea of a beautiful morning..?"
    "He's sarcastic. That's always a good sign, sarcasm. That's how we always knew when you were all right when you came back from missions," Cait Sith remarked to Cloud over his shoulder. Cloud grunted and kept working.
    Cait Sith perched himself on Riku's chest and curled up into a ball, paws inward like a rabbit's. "He changed his tune once he saw what bad shape you were in," he informed Riku happily, over Cloud's silent discontent. "He likes his fights fair usually, honest. Wasn't his plan to start a fuss in the first place, but you were asking for it a little, you know."
    "'Asking for it'? It wasn't like I was going around in a short skirt."
    The fingers tightening the gauze around his left arm stumbled a moment.
    "Well, that's something you and he can hash out later," said the cat. He paused to ponder this remark. "Hash. Hash sounds like a good idea. Hey Cloud, when we get to the castle, wanna--"
    "No."
    "But we could--"
    "No."
    "It'd be just like old--"
    "No."
    Cait Sith shrugged. "Regular party animal as always, Cloud."
    Riku eyed the cat. It was difficult to focus at such close range.
    "...Didn't you used to have a different accent?" he asked.

    When Irvine finally released the navigation peripherals, his knuckles were bone white. His fingers shook so bad he nearly couldn't manage to reset the hat on his head.
    He took a breath and nearly collapsed right in his armor.
    They were at least a good three hundred metakliks distant from where the Uncle Remus was, even now, going cold and silent against the solar winds. The phantom ships had pursued them for ten, twelve kliks before Waver 6 could charge up to engage her jump drive, and every second of that chase had been like a scene out of hell. They had depleted both mounted cannons and the auxiliary pulse beam. The shields were a wreck. The nanites were going to expire of exhaustion long before they could restore full hull integrity again.
    But they were alive, if dragging along the Up-Beauty divide like a mayfly at sunset, weapons limp and interior lights humming weakly as she glided along. They'd be easy pickings for anything now: a damn fishing boat could scoop them up, forget unidentified war cruisers. But they didn't have the strength to change it. Or anything else.
    Sora didn't realize how hard he was trembling until Reno approached him, curled in the corner of the rear compartment near the bunks. Waverers like this one were only equipped for two, including the beds, but that wasn't a matter to be figuring out at the moment. There wasn't much of anything that could be figured out.
    They had died. All of those people. Tseng and Beatrix and Elena and Rude and Biggs and Wedge.
    He had thought about death and thought he understood it, but he'd never really smelled it up-close, not like that. Heartless, dusks, even Nobodies like the Organization had been... clean, somehow. Even watching Axel fade away had been...
    Sora shook himself of the thought. It didn't bear entertaining, least of all with Reno still standing in the doorway. Reno, who had ten times the right that he did to feel like this right now.
    It had never even occurred to him just how lucky he had been, all this time.
    "You should sleep," Reno was telling him, tone muted, almost a murmur. "Cowboy and me'll take care of things up at the helm. Irvine says there's an oh-three within ninety kliks of here-- we can reach it by eventide tomorrow if things stay quiet."
    His eyes were wet. He was keeping his mouth and his voice in check but his eyes were betraying him, and Sora found, suddenly, that he was hating him for it.
    "Listen," Reno went on anyway, looking at the floor. "If you want to talk about anything, I-- Fuck, I'm not your bleeding heart type, that's Irvine, but if you need an ear or whatever..."
    "What about you?"
    The Chaser shook his head quickly. "I'm not... too big on sleep," he mumbled into his chestplate.
    Sora supposed he wouldn't be either. If he'd been doing this since the age of twelve. If he'd... had he lost his brother? He must have. If Axel's Other had been anything like Axel was, then it said everything about that distant pain in his eyes. This guy, with a look he couldn't hide, standing framed in the light of the doorway with his amber armor shining, someone who must have lost virtually everyone he had ever loved in the world--
    --And here he was, Sora: a lucky little shit whose fortune always just worked out somehow, and who had never had to lose anyone. Well, until recently.
    He didn't know when it started. It came on quietly, like the shakes had. The next thing he knew, he was crying like a baby, head in his arms and bawling his lungs out in the empty air.
    Because of Kairi. And Riku. And Mom and Dad. Tidus and Wakka. Selphie. Beatrix and Elena and Rude. The crew. Everyone. Donald and Goofy and the King and Leon and Axel and Namine and Kairi and Riku.
    And maybe, because Reno wasn't crying at all.

    "He's a covert ops specialist," Cloud explained, in a disregarding way that suggested he didn't care whether Riku picked up a single word. "Toysaurus class. Innocuous remote infiltration. His real body's at Disney Castle."
    He tugged the last bandage tight over the rope burn on Riku's left hand, one of the matched pair the storm had earned him. Odd how that seemed ages ago already.
    Riku flexed the hand. The pain reactions felt numb, the way much of his body did. He supposed they'd given him some sort of mild anesthetic. Something for the withdrawal nausea, too, although the effect wasn't as marvelous as he could have hoped. When he moved to sit up, he had to pause to allow the room to stop spinning first.
    Cait Sith clawed his way up Riku's shirt and perched himself on his shoulder. "You musta been down and out a while on something pretty heavy there, kiddo. What were you taking?"
    "A lot of people's shit," Riku sighed, rubbing his forehead. "Can we back things up a bit? I still don't know who the hell either of you are. I mean really," he clarified, feeling the stuffed cat starting up on another elaborate declaration. "Did the King send you? Is that why you're here?"
    "You're not the boy I was looking for," said Cloud. "And Reeve wasn't looking for anything. Except maybe his marbles."
    Cait Sith nrroww-ed in protest. "Now, that's a bit on the harsh side, Cloud..."
    "You were looking for Sora," Riku interpreted.
    "Were you with him?" asked the soldier, frowning at some internal dilemma. Riku could only guess what.
    "You didn't find him?"
    "The storm was too strong."
    "What about a girl-- Kairi?"
    Cloud shook his head.
    Riku bit his lip. That was it, then: they'd been separated. Again.
    And he'd failed to look after either of them.
    The swordsman backed away warily when Riku climbed to his feet. Riku eyed him a moment then dismissed it, brushing his hair behind his ears and embarking for the corridor. Cait Sith yowled in confusion.
    "Thanks for the lift, anyway," Riku muttered. "Just drop me off at the nearest world or something."
    "We can't do that," the cat complained. "It's our honor-bound duty to escort you to the castle! My honor-bound duty, anyway. I mean, now that you're here, better make the best of it and all. Cloud's working in the same direction anyway, so it should all be gravy! Biscuits. Gravy and biscuits."
    "You guys can go to the castle if you want," Riku said, hopping the ramp up to the elevated helm. There had to be a navigation display around here somewhere, something with a map, a scanner. "I'm looking for my friends."
    Cloud, following him out of the medbay, said, "Your friends don't need you looking for them. Either they're dead or they're holding their own somewhere. Don't waste our time," he finished sharply, pinning Riku's hand on the navigation console, when it had started to move toward one of the levers the boy certainly didn't know how to use. He fixed the youth's gaze with an intense glare. "You're the Keyblade's Chosen One," he told him; "I will not allow you to run from your duty."
    Riku blinked, breaking the gaze. He regarded the soldier from an angle. "Why, because I caused so much trouble for you?"
    Cait Sith, who had leapt from Riku's shoulder to the pilot's chair to stay out of this particular crossfire, objected. "Son, if we're being fair here, you can look for your friends all you want but they won't be around to find if we can't get this situation under control. Looked outside lately?"
    "Pay attention to him," said Cloud. "He doesn't make sense often."
    Riku scoffed, edging back. "King Mickey can get it under control himse--"
    Cloud gripped Riku's pinned arm and slammed it hard against the bare side console. "King Mickey couldn't get it under control!" Cloud snarled. "That's the entire point!"
    The air pulsed in the silence. It stung. Riku's hand twitched and Cloud had the grace to release it. The bandages around the wrist were blotted red. Riku flexed it and backed off from the controls, keeping the soldier's gaze, who wouldn't let him drop it anyway.
    They were very nearly circling now, like a pair of lions ruffling their manes as they waited for the other to back down. Cait Sith was impressed. They were so similar, really. In a creepy, you-don't-really-wonder-why-Cloud-tried-to-choke-him way.
    How interesting.
    How very interesting.
    "Fine," gruffed Riku at last, looking away. "But let's get one thing straight: I'm not the keyblade's chosen one. Might have been, but I lost it. So I'm still not the guy you want for this."
    "You are now," said Cloud.
    "That's only if Sora's dead. You sound like you know him, so you'd know that nimrod's a lot of things, but he doesn't go down easy."
    "Nn," Cloud acknowledged. He looked like he was looking back on some embarrassing memory and mentally cringing over it. "Regardless," he persisted. "Your status as a keybearer is unmistakable." Pause. "And you don't go down easy either."
    Cait Sith might say that his little kitty jaw dropped open. If anyone was asking him for his input at the moment, which they weren't. He felt at liberty to contribute this point anyway, adding that, yes indeed, like the tide, Cloud had changed. Complimenting people and everything? Was there a special someone out there now?
    "...Shut up, you damn cat."

    They slipped out of Montressor under cover of terran eclipse, when the station towers were down for maintenance and the patrols had deactivated for their rest cycles. This hadn't actually even been a thought of Kairi's, but a pleasant accident of Mrs. Hawkins for insisting she and her new friends stay for dinner. And help tidy up and take care of the corpse, if it wasn't too much trouble for them.
    Jim went with, because Doctor Doppler insisted the fresh air would be good for him, and Doctor Doppler went, because he really (really really) wanted to go. Mrs. Hawkins hadn't been able to offer a strong argument for either of them. Although it seemed to Namine's observation that the innkeep only relented when Doppler mentioned Kairi's world of origin.
    Whatever, Kairi decided; it surely didn't matter.
    Jack went, because it was his ship, and Annamaria went, because no one was going to tell her no. The Black Pearl's standard crew went, or that is to say they didn't, having run off with their share of the latest raid when Jack told them of their next destination. Fortunately, some pubs on Montressor stayed open all night, and between Jack and Doppler the Pearl had a full crew going by the first midnight tide. They even found themselves a cook.
    When the Pearl had disembarked on her initial bearings, blackwood hull creaking as the photon thrusters propelled her, waffly and swaying, through the starlight seas, a wash of brine and carbon dust swirling in her wake.
    Kairi's first order of business, after examining the map, was to investigate the left-over spoils in the back of the ship's hold. The deserters had made off with most of the shinier variety of valuables but there were a decent few trunks they'd left behind, mostly medical nanites and pressed unobtanium, which they could certainly sell off at the next port if supplies were an issue. (Stock was really the quartermaster's job, but Annamaria had more or less indicated that accurate bookkeeping was not on the menu where she was concerned.)
    There were also, Kairi found to her delight, clothes. Cute, neat new clothes. Most of it too posh and impractical, granted, but something besides boy's pajamas or a shredded burlap sack with "DESTINY HOSPITAL PSYCH WARD" across the back was a definite improvement at the moment.
    Pants! They had pants! She could wear pants!
    ~Er,~ Namine wavered. ~You don't think you might be getting in touch with your masculine side a little fast here?~
    But pants! Kairi cried, the joyful cry of a child who had suffered gender role-obsessed foster parents for far too long. And belts and vests! And look at these boots! These are kickass boots!
    ~Kairi!~ her Other exclaimed, scandalized.
    Oh, come on. Roxas and Riku swear all the time.
    ~Yes, but they're boys!~
    Well, the redhead declared, holding up a pair of buck leather trousers that seemed to be the right size, now I get to be one too.

    About this time on deck, Jack Sparrow was deciding he really did not appreciate being an indentured servant. Losing in a fair fight to a girl who hardly came up to his shoulder, all bloody right, but she wasn't about to go around ordering him on his ship in front of his crew. Especially the new ones who hadn't had the proper fear of god stuck into them yet. He'd gone wrong once before with a crew that couldn't behave, after all, and for stakes much lower than this.
    The talking bird and the enormous gibbering dog weren't high points either.
    Atlantis be damned, he was not enjoying this situation. It had a bad taste to it, and Jack couldn't be sure it was due to some ill dealing or just that he might, for the first time, really be biting off more than he could chew. You heard stories about the Lost Empire-- it was a destination spoken of even from before the merging of the worlds, an unknown island from which no man has e'er returned, et cetera. It was scarcely the place to approach for the faint of heart or falsely brave, and the urgency with which that little tart had set them to the winds bespoke foul play, if his senses were telling him true.
    Yes, certainly a girl to be wary of, this Kairi. A sight more brutal than that Sora boy and a fair deal craftier too. Every time he looked at her, Jack had the feeling that there was more than one person in there staring back.

    Jack may have been surprised to learn that he wasn't the only one regarding the girl warily for this trip. However, Doppler had assured the good Mrs. Sarah Hawkins that his surveillance would be conducted strictly as necessary. After all, he had told Sarah, it was unlikely her suspicions were justified.
    He did adore her, Sarah. The exchange for patronage had reflected more on their mutual loneliness than anything else, but above all he did wish he could be somewhat of a father for Jim, if he couldn't be husband to Sarah. The former was despairingly resistant, though, terribly headstrong and wayward as he was. Jim was already clashing with the cook down below deck, and they were barely out of local waters.
    "Still," Doctor Doppler confided to Archimedes, up by the bow. "Disney Castle. You know I've always wanted to visit."
    "You'd do well to keep your voice down," reminded the owl sourly. "And I wouldn't advise you to think of this as a vacation, doctor. There are no gift shops anymore, for one thing."
    "Really!" The dog tried not to show his disappointment. "What's happened, then?"
    Archimedes looked over his wing at him as if he had uttered the most insane line of gibberish ever to sully the English language. Which, in the owl's (large, leather-bound and filigreed) book, was a terrible affront indeed.
    "It'd be far better to ask what hasn't, doctor. It's a much shorter list."

    Sora didn't remember falling asleep, but on awakening he found himself in the lower bunk with winter blankets drawn up snug under his chin, and Reno was sleeping hung over the side of his bed, fuzzball head resting on his arms.
    In that lucid half-dream state when both host and Nobody were stirring, Sora thought he saw, for a moment, that firebrand hair shift and grow long, and the boy's eyes lift, framed with matching streaks down each cheek.
    "We're late again today," said Axel, smiling languidly from across the bed.
    Roxas trailed his fingers down the other's side. "What should we tell them?"
    Axel caught his hand by the wrist and drew it up to his lips. He thumbed the ridges of the veins and the creases of the palm, kissing over the knuckles. Roxas squirmed and giggled, withdrawing and tapping the older boy's cheek.
    "That you kept me out all night drinking again."
    "I did?"
    "That you insisted, that you dragged me out by the ankle."
    "Kicking and screaming," Roxas agreed, sliding over the warm sheets to slink a leg over. He pushed Axel down onto his back and straddled his waist. Or rather a little lower than his waist.
    "Hnn. Frisky," Axel moaned, twisting, as Roxas ground his hips against him.
    Roxas pinned him by the shoulders to stop him squirming. He leaned in close for their brows to touch, and kissed the corner of his mouth.
    "Mmn. I want pancakes."
    "Well, you can't have any," Roxas answered. "Xigbar's eaten them all. Every last one."
    "What about toast?"
    "He's eaten that too."
    "So what're you having?"
    Roxas didn't answer. He blew a short puff of air and ruffled an ungelled lock of the boy's firebrand hair. He grinned.
    Axel smirked. "Punk."
    Sora blinked. He blinked again.
    Reno was motionless at the edge of the bed, head still in his arms, eyelids flickering in the depths of some unknown dream.
    Sora shook his head. He pulled the covers off and sat up.

    Irvine was in the cockpit, leaned back and motionless in the pilot chair. He started when Sora entered, readjusting his hat on his head.
    "Sleep okay?"
    "Yeah," Sora said awkwardly. "You?"
    "Soldiers don't really sleep," Irvine said, smiling.
    Sora motioned numbly toward the rear compartment. "He seems to be managing."
    "Eh, he's clockwork. I'm gonna apologize in advance for what'll happen; it's never an easy thing to watch, the first time. Hell, any time."
    When Sora appeared confused, Irvine invited him over to the console. He gestured the youth into the co-pilot chair and proposed a game of cards.
    It was a new deck, with the royal emblem on the back of each one, pressed in shining iridescent foil. Sora wasn't altogether surprised that the first card dealt was the King of Hearts. Unfortunately, the rest turned out to be crap.
    He kept the king and a five of spades and discarded the rest, drawing a five of hearts for his trouble and nothing else of any use. Irvine probably read the dissatisfaction off his face and raised him, so Sora folded without contest. Afterwards Irvine laid his hand flat and showed he'd been holding nothing to speak of.
    "Just goes to show," said the cowboy, dealing out the next. "Don't take for granted what you've got."
    Sora frowned at the cards.
    "Are you and Reno okay?" he asked.
    Irvine's dealing hand froze for a moment.
    "Hey," Irvine said. "Look..."
    "They were your friends, weren't they?"
    "They knew the risks. And it wouldn't be the first." Irvine's voice was darker than Sora was used to hearing it. "Reno'll tell you the same: they got off lucky."
    "That was luck to you?" Sora demanded.
    Irvine looked up from his cards. Right into Sora's eyes.
    "Yes," he said, with total and utter conviction.
    Sora's gaze wavered under that stare. He wanted to ask, Who did you lose? Except he suspected, just like with Reno, the answer would be: Everyone.
    "In our squad I was the first after Tseng to view the Cricket Reports," Irvine continued. "I knew those babies backwards, forwards and sideways. I was acting 'em out in my sleep. I know you ain't fresh meat, but-- fair's fair, here, you haven't seen what we have. Heaven help you if you ever do.
    "You don't know what it's like to really lose: lose so badly you don't ever wanna get up again," he said quietly. Kind but not gentle. "You haven't seen corpses of the folks whose shadows've been destroyed but their hearts haven't returned. You don't know what it is to lose one of your best friends and half a week later see his face grinning atcha in a trench all the way across a battle zone. Your hollow men all came at you cards on the table, without context, without doubt; your choices were easy and you got just the validation you needed to sleep at night. Maybe not well, but sleep all the same.
    "And Reno's never been okay, not as long as I've known him," he finished, setting down the deck. "And there's no question you could ask that'd change it."
    Sora said nothing. He ducked his head and looked at his cards instead, but the numbers didn't register, blurring and bleeding into each other and the red ink of little hearts and diamonds. The way Axel had laid there, splayed flat and staring up at no one, eyes half-lidded and a placid almost-smile on his face as his body dissolved into flakes of ash.
    The man that was supposed to have been an enemy, had tried to and meant to be an enemy, and couldn't manage, because he'd found something too important to let go. Who had broken once and for all what Ansem and the King had tried to claim, had proven that what they were trying to call a monster was no more than a reflection; that, in fact, there was no such thing as "heartless"...
    Sora pressed to a hand to his forehead and screwed his eyes up tight. It didn't stop the tears.
    Irvine straightened, seeing what he had done. "Hey, wait, I'm sorry--"
    "N-no. It's just..."
    "That was outta line for me. I didn't mean..."
    "It's fine. I just-- It's nothing." He pulled a large breath into his lungs and forced his lips into a smile for the Chaser's sake. "It's pathetic, huh? Even the girls I know would tell me I'm being a wimp."
    Irvine watched him, unreadable. Fighting back guilt he wasn't allowed to hold onto and knew he needed to.
    He broke down. He grinned weakly, sticking out a hand to ruffle the younger boy's hair.
    "The world needs wimps like you," Irvine told him. "Elsewise how do we know we're still sane?"

    In the aft compartment, Reno's eyelids fluttered, and his dreams, whatever they might have been up until that point, twisted on their edge and embarked down their familiar dark turns.

    Cloud, in salvaging his poor old Fenrir, had rescued besides the intact power core a handful of personal effects, or as much as what qualified as personal effects for someone who tended to wear the same clothes until they disintegrated right off his body. It was mostly junk and, for lack of a better word in Riku's vocabulary, trash, but there was a time and place to pick one's battles.
    Anyway, as it was discovered, they had much the same frame, and of what spare clothes Cloud did carry, there were some that appealed to even Xehanort's tastes-- mainly of the form-fitting black leather kind. Well, the definitely-not-a-skirt was nice, at least, in its way. Although he thought the zippers and bondage straps were on the excessive side.
    As a small concession to --he had to admit-- his rescuer, Riku tied his hair back. It made him feel like a hell of a girl, but at least Cloud wasn't flinching every time he turned his head.
    Cloud had told him of the other Chaser ship that had been in the vicinity when the storm rose up, and this inspired the youth that all was not lost where his friends were concerned. If either or both had been picked up by those soldiers, there was at least half a chance they'd be at Disney Castle when Cait Sith's Bliadd Drwg came into harbor.
    This part of things Riku was all right with. It was Xehanort who kept the other, darker thoughts active in the back of his mind, the ones that were difficult to address. Like, if chances weren't in their favor. And if Riku really had inherited the title that he had once been made to forfeit. And whether he really was strong enough to do anything if that were the case.
    Because really, Sora was the strong one, in ways that he could never be. For one thing, he had Kairi. Who was his heart's desire anyway. In the end. That's how it always turned out, wasn't it?
    Of the three of them, Riku knew he had descended to depths that the other two couldn't even imagine in their minds, and it had drowned him so completely he could have nearly mistaken that burn in his lungs for warmth. But he had also come back out, albeit with one foot still stuck in the shallows. There were plenty of people he had met that hadn't half this damage etched into their hearts, but scars didn't mean strength. Although strength surely meant scars.
    Cloud had a network of raised lines, paper-thin, down his left arm, that bulged and pinched with the flex of his muscles. Riku didn't ask about them because the soldier was most definitely not going to answer, but in a way he sort of envied them. The strangest part was that he was sure Cloud knew this, and let him keep looking.
    ...This was turning into a very unordinary relationship.

    Kairi, trousers in hand, took a quick glance around the hold to be sure she was alone, and began to disrobe.
    She hummed to herself happily. First pants, then the world! Next thing she'd do is get to Disney Castle before either of those boys, and King Mickey would have no option but to ask her to save the galaxy. Her and her awesome, awesome pants.
    Namine held her head in her hands. Or as near as a disembodied voice could hold its head in its hands.
    This was going to be the death of her, she knew it. She had been the reluctant tool of evil, an embarrassed (yet highly dedicated) voyeur, the unwanted guest of many people and one particular boy's unattainable sex object, but standing by while her only physical form made an insult of their perfect, shapely legs in the name of an ego boost was more than any Nobody should have to endure.
    Plus there was the little business about the withdrawal sickness she had been kind enough to hold back for the most part, that she was very quickly losing her grip on. She really didn't know how she was going to break the news.
    ...Although, hitting the deck suddenly overcome with violent nausea and a stomach feeling like it had just torn itself wide open might be a sufficiently clear message.
    ~I'm so sorry, Kairi!~ Namine wailed, as though she had merely dropped a cup of tea and not, say, dropped the floodgates on 48 hours of withdrawal symptoms and, among other things, allowed Kairi's digestive system to suddenly turn itself inside-out. ~I didn't want to cause a fuss! Honest!~

    Reno had put the keybearer up in his bunk to sleep off the last of his shell-shock, and then he had knelt by the edge of the bed and watched him, silently, until his own fatigue couldn't be held off any longer.
    When the dreams had begun, it was like being lifted, his whole body locked tight and some greater force had pulled him up, like a kitten in its mother's teeth. He had seen the black sand shores where Juliet Company had dug in on his first major operation, heard the crack of bullets over the crash of waves. He'd sat beside Rude on a tire swing, the pair of them so small their little legs couldn't touch the ground, arguing about caterpillars and an appointment Reno knew he had missed but had no idea what it could have been.
    Then the images bled together and turned into a great molten stew, of buildings and shadows and solitary trees and summer rain showers coming down like locks of silver hair in the corners of Midgar's buried ghetto streets. Rain watched from the windows of their little shack, their hole in the wall in the darkest, poorest lean-tos of the slums, while Lae made supper on their tiny rusted stove and Reno washed the blood out of his brother's boxing clothes with a toothbrush.
    "How's it coming, sprite?"
    Reno, wide-eyed and big-eared, pouted at the stains and held them up to the light of their lone kitchen lamp.
    "You bleed too dark, bro."
    "Never you mind that."
    The rain got into the shack. It dripped down in a steady stream from their patched-together roof and cut right through Lae's skin, tearing it off in chips that dissolved as flakes and dots of blood on the floor. The rain poured and he disintegrated, dissolving like ash, eaten away and consumed until bare muscle and sinew shown through, shining sunset red, the same color as his hair.
    Red-stained water rose around them, sucked around Lae's boots, his torn jeans, around Reno as he stood up from the floor and tried to seek refuge on top of a chair, on the edge of the window sill, but the water kept rising. It poured out into the streets and washed them bright fire opal red and Reno fell beneath the surface, gagging and blinded and still, somehow, seeing the remains of his brother there, standing as pearl-white bone poked through his dissolving flesh, joints grinding raw and dry as turned to him, smiling with the sunken black pits that remained of his eyes--
    Something cold hit his lungs, hit the back of his throat. It knifed through his body and shocked his throat closed and his eyes open, body thrashing and jerking back out of the spray. A hand released its grip on his hair and allowed Reno to rock back onto his ass and fall straight into muddy shallows.
    Icy river water swirled around his feet. His hair dripped and fell in dark sheets over his eyes, and he panted and coughed and struggled to get the colors to focus.
    Jungle cicadas buzzed in the trees past their clearing. A steady breeze moving eastward ruffled the fronds of enormous leaves, split and feathered and waxy bright green swarming with beetles the size of his fist. The sky was heady morning blue, cloudless and threatening a thick summer heat, muggy air swirling around his water-shocked skin.
    Sora was off to the side, stooping to peer at him, trembling with concern and anxiety.
    "You-- You were screaming in your sleep," he stammered. "Irvine couldn't wake you up, so..."
    Reno blinked away the water in his eyes. He pushed sopping hair out of his face and scanned around. This was an embankment, forest somewhere-- Waver 6 was couched in the brush near the treeline, her doors open to the humid jungle air, mending hard-gummi scars like angry gashes across her starboard flank. She looked so awkward there, grounded, pitiful and alone among the branches.
    Irvine was standing there too, squatting close to his shoulder. He steadied him when Reno nearly lost his balance trying to stand in the mud.
    "Go on," Reno told the keybearer, when he'd flopped back down again. He tried climbing up onto all fours instead. "Go on, say it. Everyone does."
    Sora blinked hesitantly.
    Here it comes, Reno thought. The questions, the sympathy, or even worse the fucking nonchalance. It was always just one big variation on the theme. My dear Mister Conway, who did you lose?
    Sora stuttered, at a loss. He blushed. "You... look like a drenched cat?" he confessed finally.
    Reno stopped short, halfway to his knees. His muddy ponytail hung over one shoulder.
    "What?"
    "I mean, you really do, I guess. A big... wet cat."
    Reno gawked at Sora. Then, flushing with delayed embarrassment, he sloshed a spray of water at him.
    The keybearer made a noise not unlike a squeak and tried to shield himself. His bare feet slipped in the slick of the river shallows and he fell with a comical whumph on his side, straight into the muck.
    The laugh burst out of Reno's throat before he could contain it. Sora scowled at him from behind a thick ooze of river algae.
    Then he pounced.
    Irvine danced out of harm's way quick as his boots could carry him. In the mud, Reno and Sora each got hold of an arm and began to wrestle, bodies contorting clumsily as they slipped and slid and fell back in wet squelches and a loud splash. They snarled like a pair of warring lion cubs, one getting the other into a headlock and the other getting an elbow around their knee, tumbling and slurching in the muck and generally making the suggestion that they would be at this for a good long while.
    Above, the branches swayed, the jungle coiling and swirling in viscous movement. Birds darted, amphibians ran for cover, lizards with roadster streaks down their backs tilted their heads and tasted the air.
    A sound, like bleating but louder and more equine, streaked across hearing and disappeared again into the underbrush. Reno and Sora froze mid-tumble. They looked over to the bank, to where Irvine's attention was drawn, a narrow strip of a forest path that vanished into the undergrowth.
    Soon enough, the sound came again, accompanied by a mad dash of red and black fur on four gangly hooves, before it vanished, still shrieking, back out of sight.
    The boys stared.
    "...Was that llama talking?"

    Kairi peered up at Jim through a mess of sweat-drenched hair. His image was blurring around the edges, to her chagrin, but he seemed to be clutching an awkward sack of potatoes to his chest.
    "Well, don't just stand there!" she yelled at him.
    "But you don't-- You don't have any pants on--"
    She was starting to see a trend here.