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rallamajoopFinally got the second part of Of Flower Girls and Falling Stars this back from the beta and finalised! This was going to be posted as a single part, but it appears I've broken the LJ character limit, so the second half will have to go up in a separate post. Never imagined this thing was going to get so long. ^^;;
Title: Of Flower Girls and Falling Stars
Part: 2 of 4
Characters: Aerith, Cid, Squall and Yuffie, plus the Disney castle crew.
Rating: PG
Summary: Nine years is a long time to spend not knowing what happened to your world, but you find ways to fill in the time.
Warnings: A whole lot of speculation, copious use of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters (who, in case anyone had missed this, quite definitely do *not* belong to me). No major spoilers to be found here though.
Notes:
Continues straight on from the end of part one. If that part grew out of speculation as to what happens when your world ends when you're only thirteen years old, then this part grew out of similar speculation as to how they filled some of those nine long years waiting for Sora to show up to save the day. No more extra Final Fantasy characters in this part, I'm afraid, although I've certainly managed to pull in plenty of other supporting characters to replace them. ^^;
When they arrived, Traverse Town was little more than a firm place to stand in the endless nothing of the cosmos. The world was so small it had edges, the sort you could have walked to and looked right off, no more than fifty paces away in any direction. Nevertheless, it was somewhere to land long enough for Cid to figure out which part of the engine was making all that noise, and they weren’t in any position to be particular. Flying most certainly did not agree with Yuffie, for one, who woke up a short while before they landed looking rather green. The moment they touched down she half-fell through the hatch and actually hugged the ground.
No-one ventured far from the ship. There wasn’t far to go. The only structures of any real note were a couple of half-ruined houses, if you could have called them houses, for they were in such a state of disrepair as to give the impression that they’d be abandoned a century before without ever being completed. Despite his initial claims, the ship Cid had actually produced in that couple of months could not have flown circles around anything, not unless the something stayed perfectly still and everyone aboard had stronger stomachs than most people. There was nothing to do but wait until it was declared airworthy again. Squall kicked a pebble around in a tight circle in stony faced concentration. Aerith looked up at the sky with all its stars in different places, and tried not to think of home.
They hadn’t been there much more than an hour, however, before the looming question of where to go next was taken away from them. In the sky above, a moving star appeared, one that gradually resolved itself into the familiar shape of the brightly coloured ship that had visited Radient Garden only a few months before. The king pulled up alongside Cid’s ship, executing the kind of elegant landing that their pilot could only dream of, and the pilot literally bounded out of the cockpit. Aerith had of course heard of the king’s visit to Radient Garden and seen his ship a little from a distance, but the first clear thought that went through her head on getting their first good look at him, was that the description ‘short and mouselike’ hadn’t been any exaggeration.
“Oh, it’s you again, you worldhopping rodent,” grumbled Cid. “I was wondering when we’d run into you next. Out to cover the whole universe, are you?” Which really was, given their circumstances, as civil as anyone could have expected him to be.
The diminutive ruler declined to take any offense. “I don’t usually travel this much, but this is very unusual. I’m certain this world wasn’t here when I came through this route last,” he told them, as though he was discussing mildly unusual weather. “It’s Cid, isn’t it? We met outside Ansem’s castle… couldn’t be more than a few months ago. Looks to me like you didn’t need those schematics after all. I think congratulations are in order - I never imagined you’d have your own ship up and running so fast.”
Idle compliments in that situation were all it took to push Cid past breaking point. “By the skin of my goddamn teeth, more like it. Hell of a maiden voyage. The garden is gone your majesty. Me an’ the kids are everyone that made it out alive. The whole place blew up behind us.
“You can keep your damned schematics. Three months on that goddamn ship and the best I can put together carries one man and three brats and splutters its way into the sky, makes it way half way across the universe and dies on some nowhere world. Just you give me one more month – one little peek at those precious plans – and I’d have had this thing flying like a bird and the next prototype ready to carry ten times the load. So no, of course I didn’t need any of your goddamn help, you…” Cid ground to a halt and let his head fall into his hands. It took him a while to get himself back under control. “Sorry, hell,” he muttered through his fingers. “I know that wasn’t fair, but, shit. Can you blame a guy?”
The king’s smile faded like a light flicking off. “Your whole world? What in the name of the stars happened?”
“Hell if I know.” Cid ground out. “I come home one evening and the street’s crawling with these creatures. A bunch even got into my workshop, and damned if I’ve never been glad to have a nosy ninja for a neighbour before, but…”
“Heartless,” Aerith put in. “The creatures, they’re called Heartless.”
Cid looked at her curiously. “That what your moth… Ifa…” He shook his head, gave up and delivered the rest of the sentence looking into the middle distance. “Is that what she called them?”
The king coughed politely and regarded them both with a serious expression. “It sounds like this is going to be a long story. I can see we’re going to have a lot to discuss. I don’t know how much help I can offer you poor folks, but you’re all welcome to come stay at the castle for as long as you like. My world isn’t far from here. We can talk in more comfort there” “
“Sure, nothing here worth sticking around for.” Cid replied with feeling. “The ship’ll survive another leg. Lead the way.”
Certainly a good idea in theory, but getting Yuffie back on board the Gummi again was a different matter. She dug in her heals and refused to budge an inch.
“No! Not getting back on that ever again ever again EVER!” she screeched.
“Maybe you youngsters should come in my ship instead,” Mickey suggested kindly. “No disrespect to any of Cid’s work, but I’m sure I’ll give you a smoother ride.”
Yuffie frowned and had to be carried on board as a neurotic little ball in Aerith’s arms, but at least she behaved herself for the trip.
The king’s was a small world, but bright and comfortable. The castle was a starkly different building from the one they’d left behind back home. The king lead them all up from the hanger, through an ornate garden and up to the palace steps before they met some of the world’s other residents.
“Donald! Goofy!” The king called to two unusual figures standing in the hallway. It was fairly clear from the looks on their faces that neither had expected guests.
“Who’re they?” Donald spluttered.
“These are our guests, Donald.” The king replied. “It’s a long story – and hopefully I’m about to hear it. Would you and Goofy mind keeping an eye on the little ones for a while?”
“Well sure,” Goofy started, but Donald cut him off.
“I thought we had rules about outsiders.” He glared at the newcomers as though he expected them to launch a raid on the castle any second. “You can’t just go picking up anyone and bringing them here.”
“I’m aware of that Donald, and you’ll have to trust me that these are very exceptional circumstances,” said the king firmly. “Now, Miss Aerith, Mr Cid, if you’ll follow me through here, we can talk in the library.”
Donald settled for strutting irritably in a full circuit around the two youngsters so he could examine them from all angles, finally stopping to stare suspiciously at Yuffie from roughly where he started. Yuffie stared back for a few seconds, then poked him very deliberately in the eye. Squall had to put a lot of effort into not laughing out loud at Donald’s response.
***
“Now, you were saying before that Ansem was researching the Heartless?” The king began.
Despite its enormous bookshelves towering towards the ceiling far over their heads, the library was a well-lit and spacious area, certainly as comfortable a place for this conversation as they could hope to find. The three of them filed into a small study area off to one side, equipped with a desk and chairs – though by unspoken agreement it was decided this subject matter would be better dealt with standing.
“No-one knew what he was researching,” Cid replied to the king’s question. “Though it sounds like Aerith has run into some information I haven’t,” he added, not unkindly.
Aerith made sure she dragged her eyes back from the various titles on the nearest bookshelf, to which they kept wandering when she tried to think about the past. She found there was no way she could look both of them in the face at once, so forgave herself for speaking facing the floor. “Yes, my father was…” ( - is - ) “a scientist. He’s worked with Ansem a few times.”
“He worked with Ansem on this?” Cid sounded appropriately incredulous about that idea.
Aerith shook her head slightly. “One of Ansem’s assistants showed him part of a report about what they were working on. It talked about the Heartless at length.”
The king folded his arms thoughtfully. “This is all very strange. When I went to see Ansem he was studying the darkness of the human heart. It seems to me these Heartless would have to be related – but when I spoke to him he was concerned his research was becoming dangerous and terminated the project. Something must have happened to change his mind.”
“What sort of something?” Aerith wondered.
“I can only guess what might have happened, but Ansem isn’t a reckless man – he must have had some reason for reopening his research.” The king spoke with the kind of conviction no-one would seriously consider arguing with. “If the Heartless started appearing, if he had some clue that the world was in danger, that might well have been enough.”
Aerith considered this. “When his assistant came to see my father, he didn’t make it sound as though there was any danger.”
“Yeah, come to think of it, that’s the same thing they were telling people when those Heartless things started showing up,” Cid added.
The king seemed to be about to offer some theory on this, but he hesitated and shook his head. “It’s too hard to say. The problem is we just don’t have enough information.” He looked thoughtful. “Exactly what happened after you left? You said there were monsters, but can we really be sure the whole world was destroyed?”
Aerith and Cid glanced at each other, but neither had considered that angle. “Before we left there was someone – hell, it was Aerith’s mother, I mean, and she has this way of knowing this stuff – and she seemed pretty sure our time was up. I’d trust her judgment further than my own, but we didn’t exactly stop to look back on our way out. I wouldn’t have a clue what might be left there.”
“Then the first thing we need to do is find out,” Mickey declared. “I’ll take my ship and go back there. Just maybe, I’ll find something that’ll give us a clue. In the meantime, I think you all deserve a good rest.”
“Are you sure you want to do that on your own? I could…” Cid started.
“I promise you I’ll be careful…” The king pushed the library doors open. “This way please, I can at least get you settled in before I go.”
Aerith and Cid were led out of a side door, down a long corridor and up a short flight of stairs. The door at the top led to an ornate bedroom with a single occupant with undeniable resemblance to the king himself.
“Good morn…” She began at the sound of the door opening, then caught sight of the others. “Oh, my.”
“May I present Queen Minnie.” The king declared as he ushered them through the door. “Minnie, may I introduce Aerith Gainsborough and Cid Highwind. I’ve invited them and two of their younger companions to stay at the castle for a while. I have some important errands to run which I don’t want to postpone, so can I ask you to help them get settled in while I’m away?”
The queen clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s an honour to make your acquaintance,” she declared, reaching up to take their hands in greeting in turn, handling the whole situation with a relaxed dignity that Donald could only have dreamed of. “Guests! It seems like so long since we’ve had any. Welcome to our castle. Of course we can find you somewhere to stay.”
The king nodded and smiled in satisfaction. “I expect I’ll be gone a few hours, but in the meantime, why don’t we give them the guest rooms in the West wing? They might need some dusting, but there’ll be plenty of space.”
“That sounds perfect,” Minnie agreed. “Now, have you been given a tour of the castle yet? Right this way, please.”
“Invited to stay, very posh. Almost like we had somewhere else to go.” Cid muttered, just loud enough for Aerith to hear on their way out, though for the rest of the process of finding guest rooms he was on his best behaviour.
***
From then on, it really was just a matter of settling in. The castle was as pleasant a place to stay as anyone could have asked, but after all that had happened was disappointingly anticlimactic. The end of the world had been and gone and now the universe seemed to expect them to get on with their lives.
Mickey never reached Radiant Garden. The closest he could get from any direction of approach brought him up against a field of floating asteroids, in between which hid dozens of tiny ships of unfamiliar design which would begin to snipe at him as soon as he came into range. Cid listened to all this with gritted teeth, gave the inevitable tirade about the Gummi ships’ lack of weaponry and decent shields and started making lists and sketches of new parts he’d need.
Cid’s way of coping in those first months after they arrived was to throw himself back into his work on the ship and keep as busy as possible. It was a huge relief to him to have the primary responsibility for the care of three children removed. He was – in his own words – not cut out to be a hero, or a parent, and he was only too happy to relinquish both roles to the more qualified residents of the castle. He didn’t quite resume his old work habit of vanishing for weeks at a time, as he’d always made sure to make at least an a awkward attempt to check on all the kids he’d rescued every day. At other times he would of his own accord, usually complaining about flying rodents and the damn chipmunks that were giving him another headache.
“It always used to be my dream to build a ship that would fly me up into space some day,” he told Aerith once. “Just doesn’t seem so important now that I don’t have the old hanger to come back to.”
Goofy offered to give Squall ‘a few pointers’ on using the gunblade. The resulting session did not go well. By the time it was all over, it had been well and truly established that wielding a gunblade and bludgeoning the enemy with a spinning shield were two arts which had next to nothing in common, and it was further established that no-one other than Squall was going to get to so much as touch that particular heirloom for a good long while.
Donald took to counting the castle cutlery, and shortly thereafter confirmed his suspicion – pieces were gradually disappearing. The following day he caught Yuffie in the garden trying to fashion makeshift shuriken out of a pile of pilfered forks. Caught red-handed, Yuffie did what any self-respecting juvenile ninja menace would have done and legged it. The ensuing chase took them half way around the castle, overturned fifteen pieces of furniture and broke four expensive pots and a table; ending fairly abruptly in Daisy’s room. Yuffie got a slap on the wrist, while Donald got a twenty minute lecture on responsible behaviour and picking on little girls. Yuffie stuck her tongue out at him from behind Daisy’s skirt. Situations were all but reversed in just the following days, however, when Daisy’s jewelry became Yuffie’s next target.
Aerith spent a lot of time in the library, or in Minnie’s company. There had been no queen in Radiant Garden during Aerith’s lifetime – but the role could conceivably have been invented just for Minnie. Aerith discovered that she was a kind soul, and if in her presence everything suddenly caught up with you and you started to cry without any apparent reason, she’d understand and she’d stay there for as long as you needed her.
The most truly notable event of the period took place one Sunday afternoon, when Merlin appeared in the throne room in a puff of smoke. Cid (who was not technically allowed to smoke in the castle but had enough faith in the ventilation of some of the larger rooms to occasionally risk it) nearly swallowed his cigarette.
“Your majesty! Your majesty! ” The elderly magician hollered. “Something terrible has happened! Something…”
“Merlin?!” Blurted Cid. “How the hell did you get here?”
Merlin blinked through the clearing smoke cloud. “Ah… young Master Highwind, isn’t it? What in the universe are you doing in the king’s castle?”
“That was my question.” Cid reminded him, stubbing out his cigarette to avoid further mishaps. “I shouldn’t be surprised you know the mouse.”
“Mouse?” spluttered Merlin. “That mouse is a king renowned on worlds you’ve never even heard of!”
“Well you can tell him that when he gets back.” Cid informed him. “He’s off on another one of his trips, probably won’t be back until this evening. You can break your terrible news then.”
“Or maybe even earlier, if he’s running early,” piped up a voice from well below eye level. Cid and Merlin both jumped – neither had heard the small door open. “Merlin! I thought I smelled smoke,” the king exclaimed, prompting a coughing fit from Cid that had absolutely nothing to do with any stubborn nicotine addiction of any kind. “I should have known you’d make it out of there in one piece.”
“In one piece?” Merlin exclaimed. “You mean you knew what happened to our world?”
“Of course. I’ve known for weeks. Cid here and three children were the only ones we knew of who escaped. They’ve been staying at the castle with me ever since.”
“Wait just a sec.” Cid cut in. “You mean to tell us you didn’t know what happened to the Garden until now? The hell have you been all this time?”
Merlin positively fumed. “I’ll have you know I was away on a journey when the unspeakable calamity that befell our world occurred. I hadn’t the slightest inkling until I tried to take myself back home not an hour ago and found myself landed on an asteroid floating in space where my house should have been!”
Cid wasn’t mollified in the least. “Mighty convenient. Bet the rest of us would’ve liked that freedom to just pop out of there at will.”
“Cid, you shouldn’t be so harsh,” said the king. “The worlds may be disconnected, but most of them have at least one or two residents who know perfectly well what else is out there – or even have visited others. And Merlin may have powers most of us don’t, but even his magic can only transport one person between worlds at a time. We met years ago, but I still had to wait until a way for my ship opened up before I could visit his world. It doesn’t make his magic useless.” Merlin looked vaguely sheepish, but didn’t contradict any of this.
“Fat lot of good it did those poor bastards back home.” Grumbled Cid, but beyond that little more was said on the subject.
Merlin took over one of the many castle guest rooms and was unpacked and settled in in no time. Two days later, he was gone again, allegedly on a mission of investigation and information gathering of the utmost importance, but the long and short of it was that no mere change in the base of his operations would quell Merlin’s love of travel. He did find the time between trips a few weeks later to tell Squall that he knew a thing or two about heirloom swords. Squall told him, reasonably politely, to go away.
Before long, Cid was taking his modified Gummi ships – which now boasted engines which purred rather than spluttered and really could have flown circles around his first prototype (if not yet the king’s much sleeker craft) – on longer and longer test flights. “Strangest thing, “ he brought up over dinner one evening. “You can see all those stars out there just fine, but I can’t for the life of me find any way to get anywhere close to landing on most of them. Some kind of a weird field keeps pushing me back.” At the other end of the table, Yuffie waited until Squall was looking the other way and flicked a pea at him with pinpoint accuracy. Squall pretended not to notice. Hard.
“That’ll be the world shields.” Micky explained. “There can’t be more than a handful of worlds out there that are properly connected. The shields keep out just about everything else.”
Cid considered this new item of information. “Kinda takes the fun out of space flight, if you ask me.”
“Maybe, but you have to remember, those shields keep out unfriendly visitors the same as friendly ones. It might keep the worlds separated, but it also keeps them safe,” said the king. The fourth pea proved to be Squall’s breaking point. Yuffie made a face that strongly suggested to all in view that she’d just been kicked under the table.
Cid looked thoughtful. “What about our world? You visited us way before everything went critical. Why didn’t we have one of them shields?”
“You used to. It was destroyed a short while before I got there. You remember the meteor shower you told me about?”
Cid paused a few seconds as the implications added up in his head. “All that Gummi stuff came from our shield? Damn, never would’ve thought.”
“The Heartless,” Aerith put in. “They started appearing around the same time. A few people saw them around the town long before that night when they attacked in force.”
Down the table, Donald had definitely noticed Yuffie’s expression. “Squall,” he warned. “You aren’t teasing Yuffie again are…” He stopped as a carrot bounced off the side of his head. Yuffie giggled in a way that really wasn’t going to do her cause any good.
“That’s one hell of a big coincidence. You think losing the shield is what let them in?” Cid suggested.
“There’s got to be some kind of connection,” Mickey agreed.
“But… my mother said the meteor shower wasn’t anything to fear.” Even after all this time, Aerith felt her throat tighten; barely. She blinked her eyes a few times and did her best to shrug it off.
“Maybe that’s only because the shower itself wasn’t the danger,” The king suggested. “Or maybe we’re all looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it was the Heartless that destroyed the shield in the first place.”
“Lotta maybes,” Cid complained, speaking louder now to be heard over the full blown food fight that was breaking out at the other side of the room.
Mickey shook his head. “There are just too many possibilities at the moment and not enough information.”
“Then what can we do?” Aerith wondered.
“Well, we can always do some research,” Mickey suggested. “There’s no reason to believe this is the first time something like this has ever happened – maybe we’ll learn something that will let us start narrowing those possibilities down. We can keep improving the Gummi ships too – maybe some day we’ll have them up to scratch to take us back to your world again and see what we can find there. But in the meantime, there isn’t much we can do except wait and see.” He paused, looked around the room, and sighed. “And right now, we can send someone in to do something about the mess…”
***
The wait had its advantages – it gave them plenty of time to prepare – even in ways that would not see fruit for years afterwards. Though certainly no such distant concerns were on Squall’s mind when someone knocked on his bedroom door a few evenings later.
The king pushed the door open. “I thought I’d find you here. Do you mind if I join you?”
Squall nodded a bit. The king ambled in and quickly spotted the gunblade, given place of honour on a side table that carried nothing else. “That’s the one your father left to you, isn’t it? Do you mind if I have a look?”
Squall wasn’t too keen on anyone else near it, but this was the king. “’Kay.”
Mickey lifted the weapon up with enviable ease. He examined it intently for a few minutes. “It’s impressive workmanship. It’s similar in design to any other heavy blade weapon, though the trigger mechanism would add an extra dimension to how you’d wield it.”
“Goofy and Merlin already tried to tell me they could show me how to use it. They hardly knew what it was,” said Squall, a little sulkily.
“Well, I’d wager I know a fair bit more about swordplay than either of them, but the truth is I can’t teach you to use it either,” the king told him without a trace of embarrassment. “This weapon is going to be far too heavy for you to use for some years to come. But what I can do is get you started on some basic swordsmanship – everyone starts with a practice weapon. And when you’ve had a few years of that, maybe you’ll be ready to try out the real thing too.”
Yuffie spent a week pretending not to watch Squall’s practice intently before the king asked her whether she wanted to join in. Yuffie told him ninjas didn’t care about stupid sword stuff, and the king replied that that was a shame because Squall could really have used a sparring partner his own age, even if that partner was learning to use different weapons and techniques.
Yuffie only held out for a couple of seconds before asking: What kind of different weapons?
And the rest very rapidly became history.
On to part 2b
Title: Of Flower Girls and Falling Stars
Part: 2 of 4
Characters: Aerith, Cid, Squall and Yuffie, plus the Disney castle crew.
Rating: PG
Summary: Nine years is a long time to spend not knowing what happened to your world, but you find ways to fill in the time.
Warnings: A whole lot of speculation, copious use of Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters (who, in case anyone had missed this, quite definitely do *not* belong to me). No major spoilers to be found here though.
Notes:
Continues straight on from the end of part one. If that part grew out of speculation as to what happens when your world ends when you're only thirteen years old, then this part grew out of similar speculation as to how they filled some of those nine long years waiting for Sora to show up to save the day. No more extra Final Fantasy characters in this part, I'm afraid, although I've certainly managed to pull in plenty of other supporting characters to replace them. ^^;
When they arrived, Traverse Town was little more than a firm place to stand in the endless nothing of the cosmos. The world was so small it had edges, the sort you could have walked to and looked right off, no more than fifty paces away in any direction. Nevertheless, it was somewhere to land long enough for Cid to figure out which part of the engine was making all that noise, and they weren’t in any position to be particular. Flying most certainly did not agree with Yuffie, for one, who woke up a short while before they landed looking rather green. The moment they touched down she half-fell through the hatch and actually hugged the ground.
No-one ventured far from the ship. There wasn’t far to go. The only structures of any real note were a couple of half-ruined houses, if you could have called them houses, for they were in such a state of disrepair as to give the impression that they’d be abandoned a century before without ever being completed. Despite his initial claims, the ship Cid had actually produced in that couple of months could not have flown circles around anything, not unless the something stayed perfectly still and everyone aboard had stronger stomachs than most people. There was nothing to do but wait until it was declared airworthy again. Squall kicked a pebble around in a tight circle in stony faced concentration. Aerith looked up at the sky with all its stars in different places, and tried not to think of home.
They hadn’t been there much more than an hour, however, before the looming question of where to go next was taken away from them. In the sky above, a moving star appeared, one that gradually resolved itself into the familiar shape of the brightly coloured ship that had visited Radient Garden only a few months before. The king pulled up alongside Cid’s ship, executing the kind of elegant landing that their pilot could only dream of, and the pilot literally bounded out of the cockpit. Aerith had of course heard of the king’s visit to Radient Garden and seen his ship a little from a distance, but the first clear thought that went through her head on getting their first good look at him, was that the description ‘short and mouselike’ hadn’t been any exaggeration.
“Oh, it’s you again, you worldhopping rodent,” grumbled Cid. “I was wondering when we’d run into you next. Out to cover the whole universe, are you?” Which really was, given their circumstances, as civil as anyone could have expected him to be.
The diminutive ruler declined to take any offense. “I don’t usually travel this much, but this is very unusual. I’m certain this world wasn’t here when I came through this route last,” he told them, as though he was discussing mildly unusual weather. “It’s Cid, isn’t it? We met outside Ansem’s castle… couldn’t be more than a few months ago. Looks to me like you didn’t need those schematics after all. I think congratulations are in order - I never imagined you’d have your own ship up and running so fast.”
Idle compliments in that situation were all it took to push Cid past breaking point. “By the skin of my goddamn teeth, more like it. Hell of a maiden voyage. The garden is gone your majesty. Me an’ the kids are everyone that made it out alive. The whole place blew up behind us.
“You can keep your damned schematics. Three months on that goddamn ship and the best I can put together carries one man and three brats and splutters its way into the sky, makes it way half way across the universe and dies on some nowhere world. Just you give me one more month – one little peek at those precious plans – and I’d have had this thing flying like a bird and the next prototype ready to carry ten times the load. So no, of course I didn’t need any of your goddamn help, you…” Cid ground to a halt and let his head fall into his hands. It took him a while to get himself back under control. “Sorry, hell,” he muttered through his fingers. “I know that wasn’t fair, but, shit. Can you blame a guy?”
The king’s smile faded like a light flicking off. “Your whole world? What in the name of the stars happened?”
“Hell if I know.” Cid ground out. “I come home one evening and the street’s crawling with these creatures. A bunch even got into my workshop, and damned if I’ve never been glad to have a nosy ninja for a neighbour before, but…”
“Heartless,” Aerith put in. “The creatures, they’re called Heartless.”
Cid looked at her curiously. “That what your moth… Ifa…” He shook his head, gave up and delivered the rest of the sentence looking into the middle distance. “Is that what she called them?”
The king coughed politely and regarded them both with a serious expression. “It sounds like this is going to be a long story. I can see we’re going to have a lot to discuss. I don’t know how much help I can offer you poor folks, but you’re all welcome to come stay at the castle for as long as you like. My world isn’t far from here. We can talk in more comfort there” “
“Sure, nothing here worth sticking around for.” Cid replied with feeling. “The ship’ll survive another leg. Lead the way.”
Certainly a good idea in theory, but getting Yuffie back on board the Gummi again was a different matter. She dug in her heals and refused to budge an inch.
“No! Not getting back on that ever again ever again EVER!” she screeched.
“Maybe you youngsters should come in my ship instead,” Mickey suggested kindly. “No disrespect to any of Cid’s work, but I’m sure I’ll give you a smoother ride.”
Yuffie frowned and had to be carried on board as a neurotic little ball in Aerith’s arms, but at least she behaved herself for the trip.
The king’s was a small world, but bright and comfortable. The castle was a starkly different building from the one they’d left behind back home. The king lead them all up from the hanger, through an ornate garden and up to the palace steps before they met some of the world’s other residents.
“Donald! Goofy!” The king called to two unusual figures standing in the hallway. It was fairly clear from the looks on their faces that neither had expected guests.
“Who’re they?” Donald spluttered.
“These are our guests, Donald.” The king replied. “It’s a long story – and hopefully I’m about to hear it. Would you and Goofy mind keeping an eye on the little ones for a while?”
“Well sure,” Goofy started, but Donald cut him off.
“I thought we had rules about outsiders.” He glared at the newcomers as though he expected them to launch a raid on the castle any second. “You can’t just go picking up anyone and bringing them here.”
“I’m aware of that Donald, and you’ll have to trust me that these are very exceptional circumstances,” said the king firmly. “Now, Miss Aerith, Mr Cid, if you’ll follow me through here, we can talk in the library.”
Donald settled for strutting irritably in a full circuit around the two youngsters so he could examine them from all angles, finally stopping to stare suspiciously at Yuffie from roughly where he started. Yuffie stared back for a few seconds, then poked him very deliberately in the eye. Squall had to put a lot of effort into not laughing out loud at Donald’s response.
***
“Now, you were saying before that Ansem was researching the Heartless?” The king began.
Despite its enormous bookshelves towering towards the ceiling far over their heads, the library was a well-lit and spacious area, certainly as comfortable a place for this conversation as they could hope to find. The three of them filed into a small study area off to one side, equipped with a desk and chairs – though by unspoken agreement it was decided this subject matter would be better dealt with standing.
“No-one knew what he was researching,” Cid replied to the king’s question. “Though it sounds like Aerith has run into some information I haven’t,” he added, not unkindly.
Aerith made sure she dragged her eyes back from the various titles on the nearest bookshelf, to which they kept wandering when she tried to think about the past. She found there was no way she could look both of them in the face at once, so forgave herself for speaking facing the floor. “Yes, my father was…” ( - is - ) “a scientist. He’s worked with Ansem a few times.”
“He worked with Ansem on this?” Cid sounded appropriately incredulous about that idea.
Aerith shook her head slightly. “One of Ansem’s assistants showed him part of a report about what they were working on. It talked about the Heartless at length.”
The king folded his arms thoughtfully. “This is all very strange. When I went to see Ansem he was studying the darkness of the human heart. It seems to me these Heartless would have to be related – but when I spoke to him he was concerned his research was becoming dangerous and terminated the project. Something must have happened to change his mind.”
“What sort of something?” Aerith wondered.
“I can only guess what might have happened, but Ansem isn’t a reckless man – he must have had some reason for reopening his research.” The king spoke with the kind of conviction no-one would seriously consider arguing with. “If the Heartless started appearing, if he had some clue that the world was in danger, that might well have been enough.”
Aerith considered this. “When his assistant came to see my father, he didn’t make it sound as though there was any danger.”
“Yeah, come to think of it, that’s the same thing they were telling people when those Heartless things started showing up,” Cid added.
The king seemed to be about to offer some theory on this, but he hesitated and shook his head. “It’s too hard to say. The problem is we just don’t have enough information.” He looked thoughtful. “Exactly what happened after you left? You said there were monsters, but can we really be sure the whole world was destroyed?”
Aerith and Cid glanced at each other, but neither had considered that angle. “Before we left there was someone – hell, it was Aerith’s mother, I mean, and she has this way of knowing this stuff – and she seemed pretty sure our time was up. I’d trust her judgment further than my own, but we didn’t exactly stop to look back on our way out. I wouldn’t have a clue what might be left there.”
“Then the first thing we need to do is find out,” Mickey declared. “I’ll take my ship and go back there. Just maybe, I’ll find something that’ll give us a clue. In the meantime, I think you all deserve a good rest.”
“Are you sure you want to do that on your own? I could…” Cid started.
“I promise you I’ll be careful…” The king pushed the library doors open. “This way please, I can at least get you settled in before I go.”
Aerith and Cid were led out of a side door, down a long corridor and up a short flight of stairs. The door at the top led to an ornate bedroom with a single occupant with undeniable resemblance to the king himself.
“Good morn…” She began at the sound of the door opening, then caught sight of the others. “Oh, my.”
“May I present Queen Minnie.” The king declared as he ushered them through the door. “Minnie, may I introduce Aerith Gainsborough and Cid Highwind. I’ve invited them and two of their younger companions to stay at the castle for a while. I have some important errands to run which I don’t want to postpone, so can I ask you to help them get settled in while I’m away?”
The queen clapped her hands together in delight. “It’s an honour to make your acquaintance,” she declared, reaching up to take their hands in greeting in turn, handling the whole situation with a relaxed dignity that Donald could only have dreamed of. “Guests! It seems like so long since we’ve had any. Welcome to our castle. Of course we can find you somewhere to stay.”
The king nodded and smiled in satisfaction. “I expect I’ll be gone a few hours, but in the meantime, why don’t we give them the guest rooms in the West wing? They might need some dusting, but there’ll be plenty of space.”
“That sounds perfect,” Minnie agreed. “Now, have you been given a tour of the castle yet? Right this way, please.”
“Invited to stay, very posh. Almost like we had somewhere else to go.” Cid muttered, just loud enough for Aerith to hear on their way out, though for the rest of the process of finding guest rooms he was on his best behaviour.
***
From then on, it really was just a matter of settling in. The castle was as pleasant a place to stay as anyone could have asked, but after all that had happened was disappointingly anticlimactic. The end of the world had been and gone and now the universe seemed to expect them to get on with their lives.
Mickey never reached Radiant Garden. The closest he could get from any direction of approach brought him up against a field of floating asteroids, in between which hid dozens of tiny ships of unfamiliar design which would begin to snipe at him as soon as he came into range. Cid listened to all this with gritted teeth, gave the inevitable tirade about the Gummi ships’ lack of weaponry and decent shields and started making lists and sketches of new parts he’d need.
Cid’s way of coping in those first months after they arrived was to throw himself back into his work on the ship and keep as busy as possible. It was a huge relief to him to have the primary responsibility for the care of three children removed. He was – in his own words – not cut out to be a hero, or a parent, and he was only too happy to relinquish both roles to the more qualified residents of the castle. He didn’t quite resume his old work habit of vanishing for weeks at a time, as he’d always made sure to make at least an a awkward attempt to check on all the kids he’d rescued every day. At other times he would of his own accord, usually complaining about flying rodents and the damn chipmunks that were giving him another headache.
“It always used to be my dream to build a ship that would fly me up into space some day,” he told Aerith once. “Just doesn’t seem so important now that I don’t have the old hanger to come back to.”
Goofy offered to give Squall ‘a few pointers’ on using the gunblade. The resulting session did not go well. By the time it was all over, it had been well and truly established that wielding a gunblade and bludgeoning the enemy with a spinning shield were two arts which had next to nothing in common, and it was further established that no-one other than Squall was going to get to so much as touch that particular heirloom for a good long while.
Donald took to counting the castle cutlery, and shortly thereafter confirmed his suspicion – pieces were gradually disappearing. The following day he caught Yuffie in the garden trying to fashion makeshift shuriken out of a pile of pilfered forks. Caught red-handed, Yuffie did what any self-respecting juvenile ninja menace would have done and legged it. The ensuing chase took them half way around the castle, overturned fifteen pieces of furniture and broke four expensive pots and a table; ending fairly abruptly in Daisy’s room. Yuffie got a slap on the wrist, while Donald got a twenty minute lecture on responsible behaviour and picking on little girls. Yuffie stuck her tongue out at him from behind Daisy’s skirt. Situations were all but reversed in just the following days, however, when Daisy’s jewelry became Yuffie’s next target.
Aerith spent a lot of time in the library, or in Minnie’s company. There had been no queen in Radiant Garden during Aerith’s lifetime – but the role could conceivably have been invented just for Minnie. Aerith discovered that she was a kind soul, and if in her presence everything suddenly caught up with you and you started to cry without any apparent reason, she’d understand and she’d stay there for as long as you needed her.
The most truly notable event of the period took place one Sunday afternoon, when Merlin appeared in the throne room in a puff of smoke. Cid (who was not technically allowed to smoke in the castle but had enough faith in the ventilation of some of the larger rooms to occasionally risk it) nearly swallowed his cigarette.
“Your majesty! Your majesty! ” The elderly magician hollered. “Something terrible has happened! Something…”
“Merlin?!” Blurted Cid. “How the hell did you get here?”
Merlin blinked through the clearing smoke cloud. “Ah… young Master Highwind, isn’t it? What in the universe are you doing in the king’s castle?”
“That was my question.” Cid reminded him, stubbing out his cigarette to avoid further mishaps. “I shouldn’t be surprised you know the mouse.”
“Mouse?” spluttered Merlin. “That mouse is a king renowned on worlds you’ve never even heard of!”
“Well you can tell him that when he gets back.” Cid informed him. “He’s off on another one of his trips, probably won’t be back until this evening. You can break your terrible news then.”
“Or maybe even earlier, if he’s running early,” piped up a voice from well below eye level. Cid and Merlin both jumped – neither had heard the small door open. “Merlin! I thought I smelled smoke,” the king exclaimed, prompting a coughing fit from Cid that had absolutely nothing to do with any stubborn nicotine addiction of any kind. “I should have known you’d make it out of there in one piece.”
“In one piece?” Merlin exclaimed. “You mean you knew what happened to our world?”
“Of course. I’ve known for weeks. Cid here and three children were the only ones we knew of who escaped. They’ve been staying at the castle with me ever since.”
“Wait just a sec.” Cid cut in. “You mean to tell us you didn’t know what happened to the Garden until now? The hell have you been all this time?”
Merlin positively fumed. “I’ll have you know I was away on a journey when the unspeakable calamity that befell our world occurred. I hadn’t the slightest inkling until I tried to take myself back home not an hour ago and found myself landed on an asteroid floating in space where my house should have been!”
Cid wasn’t mollified in the least. “Mighty convenient. Bet the rest of us would’ve liked that freedom to just pop out of there at will.”
“Cid, you shouldn’t be so harsh,” said the king. “The worlds may be disconnected, but most of them have at least one or two residents who know perfectly well what else is out there – or even have visited others. And Merlin may have powers most of us don’t, but even his magic can only transport one person between worlds at a time. We met years ago, but I still had to wait until a way for my ship opened up before I could visit his world. It doesn’t make his magic useless.” Merlin looked vaguely sheepish, but didn’t contradict any of this.
“Fat lot of good it did those poor bastards back home.” Grumbled Cid, but beyond that little more was said on the subject.
Merlin took over one of the many castle guest rooms and was unpacked and settled in in no time. Two days later, he was gone again, allegedly on a mission of investigation and information gathering of the utmost importance, but the long and short of it was that no mere change in the base of his operations would quell Merlin’s love of travel. He did find the time between trips a few weeks later to tell Squall that he knew a thing or two about heirloom swords. Squall told him, reasonably politely, to go away.
Before long, Cid was taking his modified Gummi ships – which now boasted engines which purred rather than spluttered and really could have flown circles around his first prototype (if not yet the king’s much sleeker craft) – on longer and longer test flights. “Strangest thing, “ he brought up over dinner one evening. “You can see all those stars out there just fine, but I can’t for the life of me find any way to get anywhere close to landing on most of them. Some kind of a weird field keeps pushing me back.” At the other end of the table, Yuffie waited until Squall was looking the other way and flicked a pea at him with pinpoint accuracy. Squall pretended not to notice. Hard.
“That’ll be the world shields.” Micky explained. “There can’t be more than a handful of worlds out there that are properly connected. The shields keep out just about everything else.”
Cid considered this new item of information. “Kinda takes the fun out of space flight, if you ask me.”
“Maybe, but you have to remember, those shields keep out unfriendly visitors the same as friendly ones. It might keep the worlds separated, but it also keeps them safe,” said the king. The fourth pea proved to be Squall’s breaking point. Yuffie made a face that strongly suggested to all in view that she’d just been kicked under the table.
Cid looked thoughtful. “What about our world? You visited us way before everything went critical. Why didn’t we have one of them shields?”
“You used to. It was destroyed a short while before I got there. You remember the meteor shower you told me about?”
Cid paused a few seconds as the implications added up in his head. “All that Gummi stuff came from our shield? Damn, never would’ve thought.”
“The Heartless,” Aerith put in. “They started appearing around the same time. A few people saw them around the town long before that night when they attacked in force.”
Down the table, Donald had definitely noticed Yuffie’s expression. “Squall,” he warned. “You aren’t teasing Yuffie again are…” He stopped as a carrot bounced off the side of his head. Yuffie giggled in a way that really wasn’t going to do her cause any good.
“That’s one hell of a big coincidence. You think losing the shield is what let them in?” Cid suggested.
“There’s got to be some kind of connection,” Mickey agreed.
“But… my mother said the meteor shower wasn’t anything to fear.” Even after all this time, Aerith felt her throat tighten; barely. She blinked her eyes a few times and did her best to shrug it off.
“Maybe that’s only because the shower itself wasn’t the danger,” The king suggested. “Or maybe we’re all looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it was the Heartless that destroyed the shield in the first place.”
“Lotta maybes,” Cid complained, speaking louder now to be heard over the full blown food fight that was breaking out at the other side of the room.
Mickey shook his head. “There are just too many possibilities at the moment and not enough information.”
“Then what can we do?” Aerith wondered.
“Well, we can always do some research,” Mickey suggested. “There’s no reason to believe this is the first time something like this has ever happened – maybe we’ll learn something that will let us start narrowing those possibilities down. We can keep improving the Gummi ships too – maybe some day we’ll have them up to scratch to take us back to your world again and see what we can find there. But in the meantime, there isn’t much we can do except wait and see.” He paused, looked around the room, and sighed. “And right now, we can send someone in to do something about the mess…”
***
The wait had its advantages – it gave them plenty of time to prepare – even in ways that would not see fruit for years afterwards. Though certainly no such distant concerns were on Squall’s mind when someone knocked on his bedroom door a few evenings later.
The king pushed the door open. “I thought I’d find you here. Do you mind if I join you?”
Squall nodded a bit. The king ambled in and quickly spotted the gunblade, given place of honour on a side table that carried nothing else. “That’s the one your father left to you, isn’t it? Do you mind if I have a look?”
Squall wasn’t too keen on anyone else near it, but this was the king. “’Kay.”
Mickey lifted the weapon up with enviable ease. He examined it intently for a few minutes. “It’s impressive workmanship. It’s similar in design to any other heavy blade weapon, though the trigger mechanism would add an extra dimension to how you’d wield it.”
“Goofy and Merlin already tried to tell me they could show me how to use it. They hardly knew what it was,” said Squall, a little sulkily.
“Well, I’d wager I know a fair bit more about swordplay than either of them, but the truth is I can’t teach you to use it either,” the king told him without a trace of embarrassment. “This weapon is going to be far too heavy for you to use for some years to come. But what I can do is get you started on some basic swordsmanship – everyone starts with a practice weapon. And when you’ve had a few years of that, maybe you’ll be ready to try out the real thing too.”
Yuffie spent a week pretending not to watch Squall’s practice intently before the king asked her whether she wanted to join in. Yuffie told him ninjas didn’t care about stupid sword stuff, and the king replied that that was a shame because Squall could really have used a sparring partner his own age, even if that partner was learning to use different weapons and techniques.
Yuffie only held out for a couple of seconds before asking: What kind of different weapons?
And the rest very rapidly became history.
On to part 2b