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9/6/09 EPIC UPDATE: Grammar and punctuation fixes. Also an extra little joke at the end.

Chapter 3: An Explanation

Mia had been in a daze when the flying had stopped. She hadn’t noticed anything. Things were going on around her, people bandaging up her shoulder, people trying to talk to her. But her brain felt broken. She couldn’t respond or even hear what they were saying.

Whatever was going on, she didn’t care much. Everyone she knew was dead.

Somehow she wound up in a nondescript bed in a nondescript room somewhere that she wasn’t sure of, staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep at all. It would be the next morning when she finally heard something and fully registered it.

“She’s completely useless.” The muffled voice belonged to the red-cloaked man that had saved her yesterday. It wasn’t happy at all.

“She’s in shock,” said a new voice, also slightly muted. It was a woman’s, calm, soft, unassuming. “Wouldn’t you be if your world was...?”

“I’m not talking about right now! Of course she’s useless now! But even before she was ‘in shock’, she couldn’t fight worth a damn.”

“Neither could Sora,” a different, calmer man’s voice pointed out.

“At least Sora had some clue what the Hell he was doing. And he learned to fight on a freaking island in the middle of nowhere… from his friends, for God’s sake! This girl couldn’t find the pointy end of a sword if it stabbed her, let alone a Keyblade!”

There was a heavy pause. Finally the second man sighed. “We’ll have to see. You never know why the keyblades choose who they do. There’s always a reason, and it always works out in the end.”

The other man snorted. “Whatever you say, Squall. But I’m willing to bet that she’ll be dead or worse less than a day after we put her out on her own. You two had better face it. She’s no Sora.” Someone stormed away.

The woman sighed and the door to Mia’s room swung open.

The man was tall and handsome. He had coppery hair and a scar running diagonally from his right eyebrow to his left cheekbone. He was muscular and looked like he could wrestle a lion and probably win. He wore a black denim jacket with no sleeves, lined with fur around the collar. Under that was a white tank top and dark jeans. Black fingerless gloves, and a silver chain around his neck with the insignia of a cross with a lion’s head. His eyes were brown and deep, dark and thoughtful.

The woman was average-sized, with a red bow accenting the braid that ran down to the middle of her back. Her soft, gentle eyes were a bright green. She was dressed in a lacey powder pink blouse with a matching peasant skirt, with heavy brown boots. She looked mostly harmless, but Mia also had a feeling that she was a woman to be taken seriously.

The man smiled gently. Mia’s heart throbbed. “I’m Leon. This is Aerith. I told you last night, but you didn’t look all that lucid. Do you remember?”

Mia shook her head. “It’s all a blur. Sorry.”

Aerith looked at her in the same way Olette did when she was trying to comfort someone. “It’s okay,” she said. Her voice was quiet, dreamlike. “I’m not surprised that you were a little out of it. Trust me, we know how it is.”

Leon approached as Aerith spoke and held out the key that had appeared to Mia. “Do you know what this is?” he asked.

Mia started at the echoing of the words from her dream. But this time, the word did not jump into her mouth. She simply shook her head.

“It’s called a keyblade,” Leon informed her, placing it on her lap. “It’s a special sort of key that can open or close any lock. It’s also a potent weapon against the denizens of darkness like the ones that you fought earlier.”

“So… what were they?” Mia inquired.

“They’re called Heartless,” Aerith answered. “They’re what happens when a person loses their heart to the darkness.”

Mia was lost. Leon noticed and elaborated, “The Heartless are basically people’s hearts after they have been corrupted by wrath, greed, and hate. They lose their hearts and the bodies usually just disappear. These stray hearts become those things you saw earlier. They act on instinct, so, if you understand their instincts, you can predict their actions. They aren’t your biggest problem, though.”

“Great,” Mia muttered. “I have bigger problems than a bunch of disembodied hearts. How can I possibly have bigger problems than that?”

Leon smiled at her again. Wow, he was cute when he smiled. “The boy you saw while you were in Twilight Town was what is known as a Nobody.”

Mia laughed. “Heh, I kind of know the feeling.”

Aerith giggled. “Can I see your shoulder…? I’m sorry, what was your name?”

“Mia… hey, wait, my shoulder. It was broken, wasn’t it?”

Aerith smiled. “Yes. It took a long time to heal.”

The blond looked up, frowning. “Exactly how long was I out of it?”

“A night,” the woman replied unconcernedly. She prodded Mia’s shoulder. “Does that hurt?”

“No, but how did a broken shoulder heal overnight? I had a friend who broke his arm and that took almost a year!”

“We’ll get to that,” said Leon, smiling again. He was starting to figure out that smiling was the way to shut her up.

“So what’s a Nobody, in your dictionary?” asked Mia.

“A Nobody is the body and mind of a Heartless. They are ‘born’ in a realm between light and darkness, on a world that never existed in the first place. They are worse than the Heartless, because they can think and plan. Most don’t look human, but the very strongest do. They make up what is known as Organization XIII. They’re trying to do something with the hearts of worlds. They sometimes pretend to have emotions. However, they don’t have hearts to feel anything with.”

“So you’re saying that boy… wasn’t human.” Mia looked down at the keyblade. “No,” said Leon. “His name’s Roxas, he’s the lowest-ranking member of Organization XIII.”

“Lowest-ranking?!” Mia practically moaned. “He’s the lowest-ranking member and I got my a** handed to me?!” She didn’t swear a lot, but she needed to let off steam. “That guy was right, I am useless!” Her shoulders were trembling. She was going to cry again at any second.

Aerith stared accusingly at Leon. “They’re only ranked in accordance to the order they joined the Organization,” she said, trying to be comforting. “It’s got nothing to do with how strong they are. In my opinion, Roxas is one of the strongest.”

It wasn’t working. Mia was crying again. “Everything’s gone! Rai, Fuu, Hayner, Olette! The stupid Struggle tournament! That nice lady at the candy shop who’d always give us all candy after we got out of school! It’s all gone!”

“If you can stop Organization XIII for good, it’ll all come back again,” Aerith said, patting Mia’s back.

“But how am I supposed to stop Organization XIII?! You heard from that guy, I got creamed back there!”

Leon took her hand reassuringly. “Don’t worry. You’re not alone. Can I keep explaining, please?”

Mia nodded, rubbing her eyes. She tried to restrain her sounds of mourning to a sniffle as Leon continued. “Last year, the Nobodies of Organization XIII were trying to become ‘whole’ by creating a world called Kingdom Hearts, made all out of hearts stolen by the Heartless. They were stopped by a boy with the original Keyblade, a boy no older than you, named Sora. We thought they were all gone but—”

“They’re back,” Mia finished for him weakly. “How predictable.”

He grinned, a little self-effacingly. “Yeah. See, the Kingdom Hearts they made last year was partly destroyed, but not completely. So the King of a nearby world decided to lock it up tight so, in the off chance they did come back, they couldn’t get access to it.”

“So he made six keyholes for Kingdom Hearts, each one with its own keyblade,” said Aerith. “Not even the original Keyblade could work those locks.”

“This is one of those keyblades?” asked Mia, holding up the silver and pink key.

Leon nodded. “That is the Cupid’s Arrow keyblade, meant for the angel lock. We don’t know how, but one of the new keyblade masters has already become a Nobody and a Heartless. We are almost sure that he has already released his lock.”

Mia stared at the keyblade. “I see the weight of the situation. I can also see that now is not the time to cry or panic.”

“That’s good,” Aerith said. “The worlds need you to find the others before it’s too late. You understand, correct?”

“I do.” She looked up at Leon. “So what is this place?”

“This is—”

The door burst open and a petite girl with short, black hair and gray eyes burst through. She wore a tan vest, a purple tank top, a dark brown miniskirt, and black high-tops. “Leon! We got trouble in the town!”

“What sort of trouble?” asked Leon, standing.

“The kind with a capital ‘T’ that doesn’t rhyme with ‘H’ which stands for—”

“Heartless,” Aerith murmured.

“Aw, you ruined it, Aerith,” the girl shouted, stamping her foot. “Anyway, let’s go! Tifa’s up to her eyeballs in panicking people and she can’t do a thing to help anyone. Vin’s gone, too!”

“Gone?” Leon growled. “How do you mean, ‘gone’?”

“‘Gone’ as in ‘poof’, Leon,” the girl responded. “I can’t find him anywhere and he’s not answering his cell.”

“What a time to take a vacation! I’m going to kill that son of a b***h.”

“I’ll help,” Mia offered. “With the heartless, not killing that guy…”

“No, you stay here, you still need rest,” he snapped with the brusque manner of a leader. “Aerith, you’re with me. We’ll need your magic before this is over. Yuffie, keep on the phones. Tell Vincent I need him here now!”

Aerith and Leon exited. The girl was about to follow, but paused at the door, she turned and gave Mia a cheerful salute. “My name’s Yuffie, by the way. Welcome to Radiant Gardens!” And she vanished into the hallway.