itsjustcambot | Epilogue (Closed)

Entry tags:

Epilogue (Closed)

Riku blinked, then blinked again, squinting at the sunset they were watching. What snapped him out of that daydream? What was he even thinking about anyway? He wanted to go back to thinking about it, but he couldn't remember. That horrible, uneasy feeling one has when a liked daydream or idea is lost sat heavily in the pit of his stomach.

The wind was cool on his lips. He licked them, finding they were already slightly wet. Had sea spray hit his face? ...On his lips only? It didn't taste like salt water. He felt like he was missing something, but he figured he licked his lips a moment before and something in the wind changed the taste of his own saliva.

He sighed. Why was he suddenly so melancholy? Maybe it was because Kairi was late. That had to be it. Tomorrow the chances of having one last sunset together was low. It would figure that Yen Sid would have kept her late on her last day of training. Still, if it meant that she would be safer when their adventure began soon, at least losing one last sunset might mean plenty more together in the future.

At least he wasn't alone.

"...Ever feel like you're forgetting something just before you leave?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Sora rubbed at his eyes, as if he'd suddenly looked into the sun and it had messed with his vision. He'd just been thinking about the journey they had to go on to face Xehanort...or had he? He suddenly felt...sad, somehow, but couldn't pin it on why. His immediate thoughts drifted to Roxas, since this sort of thing had happened before, but mostly when Roxas was feeling something strongly.

"Yeah, but..." He trailed off. He did get that feeling, but what was it exactly?

Sora's thoughts were interrupted by the feeling of movement - there was something in one of his larger side pockets, and it was alive! "What the--"

He reached inside his pocket, only to pull out a small kitten. The kitten sat in his hands and meowed at him worriedly, and Sora just blinked back in confusion. "How'd this guy get here?"

Just as Riku was getting the impression that Sora was feeling the same way he did, something interrupted them. Riku looked at his friend incredulously.

"Nice try, Sora. Kittens just don't show up in people's pockets." Leave it to Sora to bring a cat onto the island and feign surprise in lieu of a good excuse. And then Riku looked back again at the cat.

"Wait... Why does she look familiar?" She? Why was he assuming it was a girl? "Did the cat from that one lady in Twilight Town have kittens or something?" There was one lady down the road that had several cats, too, but whenever one of her cats was expecting kittens, she made it her business to notify everyone on the Island. Oh, Mrs. Momo...

"No, really! I don't remember how she got here!" Sora insisted, and also found it strange how he immediately assumed the kitten was a she. That was a bit of a scary prospect. Was this something like with Namine's message again?

The kitten continued to meow at him, and Sora pet her carefully in response. It seemed to appreciate his pettings, since it snuggled up under his chin. "N-no, I don't think so..." And anyway, if they did, how would one of them end up in his pocket? It wasn't like they'd stopped by Twilight Town recently. "She does feel kinda familiar, though."

This game him another thought. "Do you have a name?" he asked the kitten, even though obviously it couldn't answer. She just meowed back. He thought over a name for awhile, although for some reason, one kept sticking in his head. "How abooout...Socks?"

Considering the strange sense of familiarity, Riku believed Sora, but instantly questioned why.

Riku shifted a little to look at the cat better, faintly aware of something poking him in the leg as he sat on eth palm. "Yeah... I'm sure I've seen that kitten before." Right?

Of course Sora would name the kitten now. Idly a few names went through Riku's head, but one name stood out. Riku stared right at Sora when he said it. Something was up if they both thought the same name. "That's exactly what I wa-- OWW!" As he shifted, something stabbed his leg, and he moved quickly to see what it was. Whatever it was, it was in his pocket, and Riku reached in quickly to see what it was... Only to see two things fall out. One was a simple but pretty star-shaped charm which landed on the edge of the tiny island.

The other was a message in a bottle which splashed right into the ebbing water below.

Riku's eyes widened and he suddenly felt cold. Without a moment's hesitation he desperately dove in after it. He surfaced to see it amongst the waves, and he rushed for it. It's form shined in the golden light of sunset as it bobbed in and out of the waves. It seemed to be moving fast. Riku swam hard, but quickly realized he was suddenly closing distance. He looked back to find himself moving away from shore at an alarming rate.

He was in a rare rip current.

Riku looked back between the bottle and the shore, torn, but only briefly before swimming parallel to shore. When he found himself heading out to sea no longer, Riku paused, floating in the water a ways off before swimming back to the beach. He felt horrible, and he didn't even know why.

Edited 2013-06-02 07:19 (UTC)

"Me too. I just...can't figure out where." Socks continued to just snuggle under his chin. It was being awfully friendly towards him, when cats were usually just indifferent around him. He noticed Riku looking towards him, and blinked back in surprise. "You were thinking of that?"

But before he could get an answer, Riku seemed to discover something else in his pockets. And then he went diving after the bottle that dropped into the water!

"Hey! Riku!" He called out after his friend, but Riku just seemed to ignore him in favor of the bottle he'd dropped out of his pocket. He went swimming out after the bottle, and Sora was surprised with how long it seemed to take him. He hadn't hit a rip tide, had he? Riku would know better than to get caught in those, considering how they'd gotten in trouble with those sorts of things before.

Sora noticed the star-shaped charm still on the beach, and picked it up so that he could give it back to Riku when he returned. He dug around in his own pockets while still holding onto the kitten, and discovered there were some other things in there that he didn't recognize. However, he figured he shouldn't look at those until his friend was there.

Eventually, it looked like Riku was making his way back to shore. Sora walked to meet him, still holding Socks. "What's going on?"

Riku splashed and stumbled his way out of the surf, head hung a little and possibly looking a little pale. Completely soaked, he stood on the sand as water poured off of him. He ran his hand over his face as his stream of consciousness flowed just as freely from his tongue. "I... don't know. That bottle... Don't even know what was inside..." It wasn't the data, that was with Yen Sid for the moment. Riku sighed, looking off somewhere. "It was important. I've never seen it before in my life, but I know it was important. Now it's gone." His pained expression turned briefly thoughtful, and he put a hand over his heart. "It hurts. Why?"

He reached into his pocket, finally pulling out the item that had stabbed his leg in the first place. To his surprise, it was a tooth, wrapped in wire in such a way it was clearly meant for a necklace. He looked it over curiously. The edges were serrated like a shark's, but the shape was all wrong for any kind of shark's tooth. What other animals had serrated teeth? As he looked at it, he absent-mindedly rolled his shoulder. There was something familiar about this too, but he couldn't figure out what it was. With a sigh, he pocketed it again and looked back out to the waves. The bottle was out there somwhere.

Sora's face showed concern as Riku climbed out of the ocean. He hadn't seen him look that way in a long while.

And now he understood why. Messages in bottles were real important, and this one seemed to have washed away. Sora lowered his head for a bit, petting the kitten, before looking back up at his friend with an attempt at encouragement. "You'll find it again! If it's important, it'll come back to you, somehow. Remember how we found that bottle in the realm of darkness? I'm sure you'll find this one, too."

Sora watched as Riku dug around in his pockets more, and pulled out what looked like a crude version of his parents' shark tooth necklaces. But... "What kind of shark has teeth like that?"

Maybe he still had some more things, too. He cradled Socks in one hand, and reached into his pocket to pull out something else...a Keychain, but one he didn't recognize from any of the other worlds he'd been to. It looked a little like some kind of mechanical gear, although colored gold and bent at one end to resemble a G.

"Man, we're both finding a lot of weird stuff in our pockets..."

Riku gave him a bit of a skeptical look before sighing and wiping the water from his face. "Man, I hope you're right." Still, what were the chances Kairi's letter would have found them? Riku wondered if that was just a fluke or destiny.

"They don’t. Look at the root. It’s broken off. Shark teeth aren’t like that. ...Maybe a dragon?” Not that he’d know, he wasn’t exactly staring at Maleficent’s dental work while dodging her flames.

"Yeah. But where's it all coming from?" Still dejected from losing the bottle, he reached into his pockets again, but found nothing else out of the ordinary. He began to pat himself down, suddenly feeling like he'd lost something else when he realized there was that charm on the edge of the tiny island. That must be it. The relief seemed to confirm it.

Riku peered at the keychain before starting to make his way back over. He spoke over his shoulder. "That's a keychain I haven't seen before. What kind of Keyblade do you get?" Even so, he had a feeling not even Sora knew, based on his reaction to finding it.

"Of course I'm right!" Sora insisted. He didn't want to see his friend worry about the bottle, although it obviously seemed to have something important. If it was important, they'd find it again, somehow.

Sora grimaced a little. He had gotten a pretty good look at Maleficent's dragon teeth, although thankfully not close enough that he'd lost a limb over it. He shook his head. "That's too small to be a dragon tooth. And doesn't really look like a lion or tiger one, either..."

When Riku began patting himself down, Sora realized that he was looking for one more thing. "Oh! I picked up that charm that fell out." He tried to shift the stuff in his hands so that he could hand it back to Riku, and found a little difficulty in it. Socks crawled out of his hand and began to climb up onto this shoulder, causing Sora to flinch from the tiny kitty claws.

He then glanced back towards the other Keychain he'd found in his pocket. "I dunno. I don't remember ever getting it before." He supposed he'd have to try it out.

Normally Riku would fire back with some quip in regards to Sora's certainty, but instead remained quiet. He wanted Sora to be right.

Riku turned it over before a slight smile crossed his features. "It looks too fresh to be a dinosaur tooth." He held it up for Sora to see again. "But it looks like one, doesn't it?" It did look very similar to stuff in text books they'd seen when they were younger. But no world they'd gone to had Dinosaurs still alive or anything that strange... Right?

There was no hesitation when Riku took it. He held it in cupped hands as if it were fragile, though given the drop off the tree it clearly wasn't. Slowly he pressed it to his chest, his face a mixture of pain, longing and confusion. "...Why is this so precious to me?" He closed his eyes a moment, trying to remember, but he clutched the charm in a very caring way.

"Well, are you going to find out?" He was still clutching that charm like he was holding his own heart, but his eyes were very much focused on Sora.

It seemed like Riku had accepted his encouragement, which made Sora happy. On the other hand, it did sound like he needed it.

Sora cocked his head at the tooth, and rubbed his chin. "It does look like a meat-eater dinosaur tooth...you don't remember if anyone gave this to you on a different world?" While Sora had never been to a world with living dinosaurs, he imagined one must exist somewhere, and maybe Riku had visited it the year he was asleep.

By this point, Socks had migrated to his shoulders and was trying to climb up onto his head. What did he look like, a tree? He watched as Riku kept the charm close to him...it felt a lot like how he felt with Kairi's Oathkeeper charm. More and more, he was starting to think that something important happened...and it was disturbing that neither of them could remember it. "I...don't know."

Then he felt Riku's eyes back on him, and glanced back towards the Keychain in his hand. "May as well."

He summoned his Keyblade, now in its usual Kingdom Key form, and clipped on the mysterious Keychain instead. The Keyblade shuddered, and in a flash of lights it changed shape. This was one of the weirder Keyblades he'd found...the teeth seemed to be a larger version of the G-shaped gear on the Keychain, the body of it appeared to be shaped like a mechanical bone, and the hilt was hexagon-shaped and metal covered in various pipes, odds and ends. It was pretty heavy for a Keyblade, probably good for hard hitting, but what other properties it had Sora couldn't figure out.

The shock of the weapon summoning and then the flashing lights caused Socks to tumble off of his shoulders, and land in his hood, where she meowed in protest. "That's...different!"

"What world has living dinosaurs?" It was an honest question, though the look Riku gave Sora was as if he'd dubiously said, "Really?" "Maybe it's some creature we haven't met yet."

No, Sora certainly was no tree, though Riku might've mockingly forgiven the cat if his hair was green. He was skinny enough to be a tall palm tree, right? "At least I didn't lose this." He closed his eyes, simply deciding to take comfort in having for a moment rather than questioning. It felt natural, strange as it all was. Whatever the story was behind this charm, the feelings connected with it were deep and warm, and he gave into them for the moment.

Riku blinked at the unusual Keyblade, then smiled slightly in amusement as Socks fell into Sora's hood. He went around to retrieve the kitten, who instantly tried to scale the taller teen. Unfortunately for Riku, that meant claws where there were no sleeves to be had. He winced a little before repositioning Socks to his vest. "That's odd," he said more bluntly. "Either it came from a world with cyborgs, or giant robot dogs." He didn't sound serious, but it was hard to take a weapon that incorporated a mechanical bone seriously.

However, Riku looked from Sora's new Keyblade to his charm, narrowing his eyes curiously at it. Socks took the opportunity to jump from Riku's shoulder back to Sora's.

Sora shrugged. "I've seen living furniture, why not dinosaurs?" If anything, he'd learned not to be so surprised by that kind of thing. He was more concerned about the fact that neither of them could seen to remember that. "Although I guess it could be some other weird creature, too." Whatever it was, it was likely unfriendly, if they'd seen fit to take a tooth as a souvenier and make it into a necklace.

"Yeah!" And if it was similar to Oathkeeper, then he got the feeling that Riku would be holding on to it for awhile, and that it'd become important when they least expected it.

For all the Keyblades Sora had -some really important and powerful, and some of them just mementos of a good time- this one did seem like something not to take too seriously. "That's even sadder! I'd want to remember a world with giant robot dogs, or cyborgs!" That did sound pretty cool!

It was nice to have Socks not climbing all over him for a little while, but it didn't last. Before long the kitten was back on his shoulder and rubbing against his face. "Sheesh! This guy likes me a lot..."

Riku returned the shrug. "You got a point." He held up the tooth again. "I think I wold have remembered a world with dinosaurs, though. Or anything that probably would have had teeth like this. I'd want to remember that." For experience. Stories. Lessons learned.

"I think I'd want to remember that too." Riku made an odd face. "When you were little did you ever have Mrs. Plunker's casserole for dinner and have strange dreams?" He pointed to Sora's Keyblade. "That's what it reminds me of." Mrs. Plunker was a nice old lady, but she was strangely spry and at times astoundingly irreverent and cooky.

As Socks rubbed up against Sora's chin, Riku idly kept her tail from going into his friend's ear. A gentle scratch to the head and Socks leaned into it, purring loudly. The feeling in his chest was one of haunting familiarity. Slowly his hand lowered, leaving Socks to mew over why the scratches had stopped. Riku looked back to the charm he held. He closed his eyes and sighed a moment before his keyblade appeared in his hands. He looked back to Sora. "Do you think that maybe...?"

"Yeah, I think I would have, too." It all added up to the idea that something had happened -a LOT of somethings, perhaps- but they now didn't remember it. And that was a disturbing idea.

"You know...if we ever find Namine again...maybe she could help us with this memory thing!" He just hoped that it wasn't the sort of thing where he'd had to give up those memories in order to regain his real ones. That had been upsetting enough the first time around, even if the memories were fake. But if they were going to go help all those in trouble, perhaps they could find Namine, too.

To the question on Mrs. Plunker, though, he made a face. "I think I may have tried to forget about that..." He glanced back towards the Keyblade. "But there is something kinda weird about it."

When it seemed like Riku was too busy with other things to continue scratching him, Socks resumed rubbing her head against Sora's face. Sora had almost gotten used to it at this point, and just carefully pushed her aside with one hand. "Maybe what?" He then noticed the way Riku was holding the charm, and his Keyblade, too. "You want to try and see if you got a new Keyblade, too?"

Given his expression, Riku felt the same. He was thoughtful a moment before he spoke, rubbing his temple. "...What happened? And why do we feel this was now?"

There was a brief flutter of excitement in Riku's chest at the mention of her name, though while he wasn't sure if that had to do with some lost memory or the promise of regaining those memories. He hadn't thought about her for a while. It would be good to see her again. "Yeah. ...If we're going to get those three hearts out of yours, I don't see why we shouldn't try to get Namine back, too." How three ended up in Sora's was still a mystery, and hopefully Kairi wouldn't have any big surprises.

Riku just gave Sora a look. "You think?" But his friend was right. There was a very odd feeling in regards to this Keyblade. Had they seen it before?

"It's not a Keychain like yours..." He smirked knowingly at Sora. "But then again, that never stopped us before, huh?' Sometimes they received outright Keychains from people on worlds while others they made themselves as mementos. And sometimes something held such deep meaning in their hearts they became Keychains.

Riku tied the charm onto the end of Way to the Dawn. His Keyblade grew warm, and then like Sora's there was a flash of light. A new Keyblade, still forming from lights materializing like the glows of fireflies, rested in his grasp. He looked it over curiously, as it was a strange mixture of delicate, sharp and intricate. The Keyblade was no larger than Way to the Dawn, and was possibly a hair shorter, but it was remarkably lighter. He felt as if every stroke would be on the mark.

"It's... It's beautiful."

Edited (HTML Fail) 2013-07-05 04:10 (UTC)

"I don't know..." The part that made the least sense was how they were feeling all these things while suddenly just sitting on the island papou tree. What would have triggered all this? Unless it was something else having to do with time being messed up?

"Yeah...Kairi would want that, too!" It was still really strange thinking about the idea of three hearts inside his...especially since he couldn't remember two out of three of those. He was determined to help them, in whatever way they could figure out, but wished he knew more about the people that had somehow ended up with him.

"Nope!" Sora went ahead and dismissed his strange Keyblade for now, and folded his hands behind his head. There'd be time to try out this new Keychain later, he was certain.

Sora's eyes widened as Riku tested out his own new Keychain. That was...remarkably different from the one he'd gotten. In some ways, it looked similar to Oathkeeper. "What do you think that one means?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Epilogue (Closed)

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Sora's paid ran out so I'm stuck with mostly his Mirrorverse icons...