Returning to the Source(Continued)[Closed, Xaldin]

[♥ kats KAT kats ♥]

A blue haired woman stepped out of the corridor of darkness, her lime green eyes looked around making sure she was in the right place. She was. This place was Port Royal and she seemed to be exactly on the spot where she had first met Master Xemnas. On the docks. She stepped away from the portal, waiting for her acquaintance to follow. For the man, Xaldin, who seemed to also know Master Xemnas.

She stood at the edge of the dock, looking at her reflection in the black hued waters. It was night and the moon reflected off the surface of the water. She put out her hand and water from the ocean rose up in front of her. Into the palm of her hand. She soaked the water up, becoming refreshed. Regaining her physical and special powers. She waited for Xaldin to join her on the docks.

As she waited, she started to recall the conversation between Master Xemnas.

"Do you want to know who you are?" he said to her. "Why you feel nothing?"

That was the first thing he had said to her.

[III]

He hesitated as he stepped into the portal.

It was the barest twitch. The slightest pause before his foot passed the corridor's threshold. A hint more persperation than was absolutely necessary for desert's infernal heat.

He was not scared. Never that. But the Dark had educated him once -

And Xaldin was a man who remembered his lessons.

_________________________

He tasted salt and seabreeze and Destiny. The nectar of the Gods. Or perhaps their leavings. Like burnt copper and incense: acrid and heady all at once. There was an undercurrent of something more... something bitter. Stone and Iron: confinement or death. Yes, it made sense. In a place so full of Power, Xemnas' presence would be easily masked.

The question was why. Why would the Superior go to such lengths to hide himself? Coincidence? A mission to search for Nobodies.

Perhaps.

He noted her recharge her energies. Interesting. Something to keep in mind. Was it something she could do all the time, or was it only in response to certain external factors - dehydration, sunstroke, and so on? Healers were rare, self-healers even rarer. It would explain why Xemnas would seek her.

Try as he might, Xaldin could only pick up the barest hints of Xemnas - leading... nowhere. Another portal, another world, maybe. Someone better trained might have been able to detect his passage... while Xaldin was good, he would require better. A specialist in other words.

Still, not all was lost.

"Master Xemnas," it was disturbing how easily the word 'master' came. Only one step removed from 'Lord.' "Came to you here? Did he tell you why?"

[♥ kats KAT kats ♥]

"No." Katsumi said quite plainly as she turned towards the other nobody. She then looked across the dock, remembering where she had been when Xemnas had come to her. How she had just been sitting there, trying to figure out who she was. How did she remember that, how they met, what had happened. How he had taught her. Yet...she didn't remember anything else, asides from staying with the lady near the forest. How..she had been dying. She turned her head back towards Xaldin. "But, he discovered me here and taught me what Nothingness was. What it meant to be Nothing. That I am Nothing." Her voice, remained the same tone throughout the entire sentence. She didn't even falter or react to when she said Nothing. It was like second nature to her now.

She was Nothing. A Nobody after all. She had trying..to be something before she met Master Xemnas. But, he showed her that her true nature was to actually be Nothing.

What was Nothing, anyway?

She looked to the dark sky, the black hills. This place, reminded her of something. Like, home. Maybe because it contained her element, well almost. She was an ice element.

[III]

There was an old textbook that Dilan had once picked up, long ago. Much before he could read at a suitable pace to keep up with Ansem's other apprentices - but the textbook had had pictures and so he could sound out the words and had grasped the general concepts and that was enough. It had been about body language. Self-assurance was in posture: you could communicate it with nothing more than holding your back straight, your chin up and clasping your hands behind your back. Eyes heading right and up meant recall.

HeDilan had been a bit amused at the attempts to render street language into something communicable to the lofty, pig-headed intellectuals but he had understood the core universality of the concepts. Life informed one's body - gave it certain habits and unconscious mores that spoke their own language that others could decipher or interpret. Communication was never a sure thing, but there were certain general tendencies that could be decoded across worlds and multiverses. The trick was to bring this up to the conscious rationalization so you could make informed decisions.

Basically, his Somebody had been interested in the fine art of manipulation.

As Xaldin scrutinized the young Nobody, he was uncomfortably aware of how... blank she was. As if her Somebody had never existed at all. What traces were left by her Heart's passing had seemingly vanished, as if it had been swallowed instead of ripped out. She was fluidly mechanical and vexingly indecipherable. Before it had merely been the assumption of exhaustion, fluid loss and so on. Right now, she appeared healthy. Physically, at least. Mentally, she had clearly become the perfect 'Nobody.'

How strange. The general consensus was the stronger the heart, the stronger the Nobody. The stronger the Heart, the more ingrained habits were. That was why Xemnas monologued and Vexen took excessively laborious notes; why Xaldin still took to alcohol and why Xigbar shot people in the face with a pair of blowdryers; why Demyx strummed his sitar and-

And.

"He did not see fit to inform me," Xaldin murmured softly. If all this was true, Xemnas had... changed. And perhaps not for the better. There had always been that edge of meglomania to Xehanort's Nobody. Xaldin had always assumed it to be a front. Perhaps not.

The lancer hesitated before walking closer to the dock. "Did he tell you what our goal was?"

"Did he tell you of Kingdom Hearts?"

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