Org. XIV (story)

"Lance, people don't show up on Asylum or Celestial Grounds when they're set adrift. And Traverse Town is kinda inaccessible at the moment. Face it, we don't have any more leads..." Aleri sagged, unable to figure out how to handle this.

<*Looks at Admin, shaking head slowly*>

"Why did u create a imitation?"

<Trololololol... >

Lance shrugged, "Well, just a thought. Even then, we shouldn't give up on her. Maybe just search the worlds we do know at the very least. Agrabah, Deep Jungle... Hell, even Synthisle. Maybe she wound up there somehow..."

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Thalia perused the shops of the tram commons while she asked the owners if they'd seen Vita. Unfortunately, her search gave no leads.

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Maya laughed, "Maya wanted to." The imitation walked up to Eira and smiled before dissappearing into the sea.

"I... I know we can't give up." Aleri muttered. "...But what can we do? Well, we can try searching other worlds. ...Hang on, you act like she's been set adrift. I didn't tell you that I figured out that she hadn't been kidnapped. Did you arrive at the same conclusion somehow?"

"Maya should we join up with Lance and Aleri? To see if they need help."

"We've searched all over Twilight Town. She hasn't been seen since we left. Honestly, anyone of the Organization would guess that." Lance said earnestly.

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Thalia ended up walking to the shore line where Maya and Eira were, "What are you two up to?"

Maya cartwheeled towards Thalia with a big smile, "Maya and Eira are having all sorts of fun! Eira said Maya was a really good friend!" She said holding out the necklace for Thalia to see.

"Well..." Aleri whacked himself upside the head. "Sorry, Hayner's assumption that it was kidnapping... kinda got to me. But to drift through the Lanes Between, uh... you can't exactly get dumped there by total accident. There's usually some desire to leave involved. But why would she want to leave town...?" He didn't want to admit that he already knew the answer.

<I've been feeling nostalgic lately. I went back to the first RP I ever posted in, and sweet merciful heaven did I suck! It's hilariously bad. Bad grammar and punctuation, excessive exclamation and question marks, abbreviations, not being specific about HOW I did something, the works.>
<Oh, and I really hope Al can stop acting all uncharacteristically angsty. I made a point of how out-of-place it was by making him seem more disturbed by it than a character usually would be about their angst. Maybe my perception is being skewed, though, and I dunno what I'm talking about.>

Lance shrugged, "That I'm not entirely sure on." He leaned against the wall, "Maybe she somehow knew we were from off world and wanted to come after us..."

"That doesn't seem quite right. Why would she go after people she'd never met before? Besides, we said we'd be back soon. If she had to, she could've interrogated us about it. Would anybody be crazy enough to abandon their home, fling themselves to other worlds, all without proof that they would find their friends?"

Aleri stopped to think about that. "...Then again, our organization isn't a whole lot different. The difference between us is that we're told what to do from time to time, get roped into more problems, and we have a safety net: the rest of the organization. We get in trouble, the boss can just send a couple more members to save our hides. We have access to information. We can ask powerful people for help, and actually recieve it fairly often. It makes me feel a little sheltered, to be honest."

Lance shrugged as he looked out the window at the view, "To the adventurous heart, this place is a prison, surrounded by water." He spoke the words like they seemed familiar to him, "Maybe it wasn't even us she was looking for." He mused.

"That makes more sense. And, uh, the phrase goes 'To the heart seeking freedom'. And we're not really surrounded by water so much as mountains. The beach is at the base of the next mountain over." Aleri nitpicked, returning to his normal self. "...Still, I can't think of anything she would leave her home world for. Then again, I'm not her. I dunno what goes on inside her head."

"Maya what do u wanna do."

Maya just shrugged, "Maya doesn't know... Go home maybe. Or find something fun to do..."

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Lance smirked, "Close enough... Who knows? Maybe there was more pushing her away than we knew. We only met with her once."

Aleri paused for a moment before nodding. "...Either way, there's not much to do. If she left intentionally, she'll probably be looking all over for the reason she left. Somebody's bound to spot her. We have over thirty members, for the love of all that is organized!"

"Let's just enjoy our time here, then. I think we can come up with a cover story that'll convince the local guys. We all know how well my LAST cover story went..." Aleri shook his head slowly, wondering how he would've survived in the Organization back when stealth was actually a major part their operations.

"Okay Maya I will take you back to home."

Aleri immediately arrived at their location via Light Corridor. "Yeah, that's something that bugs me. How did you pick up Light Corridor usage so easily? We never told you how it works, and it's not just a light version of a Dark Corridor... If you just used light to make a Dark Corridor, you'd get a light portal... a corridor through the Realm of Darkness... and then a light portal on the other end."

"There are many things you dont know. I can't tell you though. I'm sorry I'm just not allowed to tell how I can make one at this moment. Past experience is all I can say at this time." She walked past Aleri and opened a corridor and grabbed Maya's hand and entered the portal. She went back to the organization and left Maya waiting at her door. She walked back out to her and pulled her book out and showed Maya the page in her journal about how she learned to make a corridor. It also stated she made the one to bring her back to her home world. "Maya don't tell anyone okay." She opened a corridor and stepped through leaving Maya.

"Waitwaitwait, there was a REASON you kn- Oh, she left. Well, I expected it to have just been a case of auto-acquiring skills from the people around you. And who am I talking to? Lance didn't follow me, Eira left and took maya with her..."

Aleri flopped onto the ground, looking up at the sky, which was slowly turning from red to orange... but never really turned blue. One of the many mysteries of Twilight Town. "...I'd be offended that she won't tell us, but I guess I'm really just annoyed at how many times I've had to wait until somebody tells me the mundane details of their pasts. I guess I should be used to it by now, but somehow, it's just as painfully irritating. In fact, it was mysterious and exotic the first few times, but then... bleh. And the worst part is, she assumed I was serious."

She stepped out of the corridor and appeared right next to Aleri. She smiled at him and sat down next to him. "You okay? By the way I didn't mean to run off like that." She looked down at her legs. "The reason I can do that is because of my past training with being a master. I needed a way to get around and me and my friends learned it from our master before the whole evil incident. Also the one we used to enter my home world was created by me as means for you and Lance to help me try to fulfill my focus but I'm not entirety sure I know what it is."

Aleri heaved a sigh. "S'okay, I'm used to being left behind..." He muttered under his breath, propping himself up.

"Usually, apprentices use Keyblade Gliders to get around, coupled with armor that protects them. It's much less efficient than simple corridors, but it makes for a flashy entrance."

"And doesn't it seem obvious? We free your home. You should know more about it than me, and I think it's obvious from what I can see. And if it feels like the vision you got contradicts that theory, you can ignore it. I've found that my mind contradicts itself sometimes, and I just have to ignore the part of me that insists that I'm wrong. When I'm actually right. It gets confusing."

"Yeah sometimes I try to make myself believe that everything is black and white."

"A lot of the time, the gray is just restrictions your mind puts on reality. There are few things I consider to be absolute evil or good. Even I'm not entirely good, in a few ways. I'm violent, and lust for battle. But the line is there, fine though it may be." Aleri asserted, reaching out and grabbing at the air, as if trying to catch some invisible thing that had strayed into his reach.

"Few things straddle the line. Nexas... for some reason, he's just about the only person who I can think of who does. He was the leader of a rival organization, and he tried to kill our leader for sport... but I sympathize with him, for some reason. Maybe he just wanted to satisfy himself of some deep-seated craving. Then there's X-Sigma..." He clenched his fist, almost making a crunching sound, despite the lack of anything to crunch.

"...He just wants to watch the world burn. That's as 'black' as it gets."

Somewhere, X-Sigma laughed. "So, had enough yet?"

Hartz stood, panting, looking at the various slashmarks he'd made in X-Sigma's chest and arms. "You're bleeding," he said.

"I don't really care." X-Sigma wiped the blood off of himself. "Now answer me. Have you had enough?"

Hartz shook his head. The bruises all over him were proof that he wasn't good enough. "No. Until I can beat you, I have not had enough!"

X-Sigma laughed. "You're not going to beat me. At least...not in the time it takes for everything to die."

"Speaking of which...why?"

The sadist shrugged. "Why not?" he said. "Do you have a better way to make everyone in all of the worlds shriek in fear?"

"But...why? Why do you want to hear that?"

X-Sigma shrugged again. "Because. I love to listen to that. The piercing scream...the feeling of fear in the air. It makes me shiver with excitement. Why do you train with me?"

"To become better. Good enough to beat...them."

"Them? The Organization?"

"Of course. They killed my father."

"He killed plenty of people."

"All he wanted was a heart..."

"Yeah, and man, did he ever go about it right. I went around the worlds day and night just to hear people scream in terror as they lost their hearts. It was the best thing I've ever done."

Hartz shifted uncomfortably. Everything always kept coming back around to screaming, or fear. Why? He decided to change the subject. "Hey...what's your real name?"

X-Sigma raised an eyebrow. "My real name?"

"Yeah. It can't really just be X-Sigma. That's not really a human name."

X-Sigma laughed. "Alright, you really want to know? My name is..."

The scene faded back to Aleri and Eira, conveniently cutting X-Sigma off. You know, before he could reveal his name.

"So, uhhh... what are you planning on doing? Short-term, I mean. Your Focus is a ways off... And you work with our Organization now." Aleri asked awkwardly, not really sure what to say. "Do you have any goals that you aren't being forced into? Hopes, dreams? I don't think I could live the way I do without a dream to chase, or without hope for the future."

<I had a boatload of OOC, so I'm posting it in the OOC Topic instead. Namine, please check that topic, either before or after this post. Based on how the system works, you'll likely see that post first, though.>
<You know, XGeass, I don't check my posts before posting them, per se. I just glance up now and then to make sure I'm not making serious errors, and correct them as they appear.>

"Many things actually. I wanted to write many stories and actually do a couple of gymnastic classes but all was cut short with time. I might join a class or two in transverse town if they let me." She grabbed her bag and pulled out s book