Mad at Mouse Part 11

I don’t know what to do.

The mouse won’t wake up.

I didn’t mean to drain all that energy out of him, but he isn’t recharging like he should be.

He should be emitting energy like a small sun. At the moment it seems he isn’t even producing enough energy to wake up.

He doesn’t look like he’s suffering from a mortal injury, and one to the heart tends to be hard to miss. I suppose there is the possibility of heartbreak, as bad as it sounds I’m hoping that the mouse is having troubles with his love, because the other explanations will cause an ending.

It’s official. I hate being mortal and mad at someone. It goes against my nature not to try and understand people, and I don’t want to understand the mouse.

His actions and decisions have caused so much trouble.

How can I feel sorry for someone’s fate when it’s their own fault and I’m mad at them? It’s confusing.

The mouse’s mortal life was coming to an end.

The heart of darkness was killing him.

The heart of darkness was keeping him alive.

I don’t want him to die, and my people cannot help him.

I cannot walk through the Dark as the Keybladers and Heartless do. Those pathways are bared to me.

Instead I use the Moon paths. It tempts madness to walk the twisted trails, but I am already mad and not entirely mortal.

There are other paths between the Worlds, all have their disadvantages. However the main advantage of the Moon paths was simply this; it was impossible to block madness. If the mouse’s World had shields, as I believed they did, the Moon paths were the easiest way of bypassing them.

I wasn’t going back to my world. I hate leaving my world. Even now I can hear it calling its siren song.

I’m a Guardian. I’m meant to guard.

I’m not meant to go gallivanting off across the universe to fix things.

That’s the job of the Keybladers.

I’m not meant to have anything to do with the Keybladers.

It’s not my job to fix them when they go wrong. They are meant to be able to fix themselves, or die.

The mouse is ill. I don’t know why. I don’t know how. I don’t know what. I just know.

My World calls, but I must move away from it, I need to listen to another song.

This song is quiet but steady. Patient and kind. She waits. I follow.

I walked for hours, tracing the Heart song, time is a funny thing, especially between Worlds.

I had no food, nor water. I had no need of it with the Dark Heart feeding me power. 

Soon the Mouse will die. Soon the energy would dry up. Then I too would pass away.

I kept walking.

Mad at Mouse Part 10

Deep in the void, far beyond where any Keyblader had dared venture, something stirred.

Formlessness shifted, strained against its prison, and chuckled deeply as one of the spells shattered, weakened to the point of uselessness.

It pulled against the others, sensing weakness.

Soon.

It waited.

Mad at Mouse Part 9

She couldn’t win.

She was failing.

Dying.

“Cure!” A voice shouted out in the darkness. She knew that voice. How she knew that voice she had no idea. She shouldn’t know any voices. She hadn’t had ears in over two hundred years.

Curled in a ball, and not a clue how to uncurl.

She could hear fighting.

Worse. She could hear a Keyblade.

Wait, Keyblade equalled Keyblader equalled elemental heart. Where was the energy?

She was going to die.

She couldn’t imagine what would happen when she died.

There would be a war, spanning the entire universe, and eventually someone would rise to fill the vacuum left by her passing.

So many people would die.

No!                        

She rose to her feet, seeing the mouse standing over her, watching her, about to get sliced by a black blade.

She reacted, deflecting the hit.

There was too many Heartless.

She wished she had a true weapon, one she knew how to use. Her arms and hands ached from wielding the axe, her muscles unused to this abuse, her muscles unused to any abuse.

Her world narrowed to ally and enemy, a mindset she was far too familiar with, and she clung to it, clung on tightly to consciousness.

To fail now was to be overrun. To fail meant death.

Suddenly there was no more enemies.

She watched the last one dissolve, the ghost of its heart floating away.

Destiny folded, sinking to the floor, taking great shuddering breaths, her entire body burned, injuries great and small made themselves known and demanded attention.

But there was the mouse.

With difficulty she forced her breathing to return to normal, and met the dark and concerned eyes of her... Ally? Saviour? Enemy? She didn’t know anymore.

“Well.” She started, and wondered how to continue. She knew what she wanted to say. She knew what she should say. She knew what custom would dictate she say.

Before she decided, the Mouse offered his hand and his name.

Her eyes flickered to that hand in disbelief, he wasn’t seriously offering...?

Yes, he was serious.

She clasped his hand, “I am known as Destiny.” She meant to say.

Suddenly, abruptly, unexpectedly, power flooded into her.

It was like being in the middle of a drought, only for the skies to open and a wall of water pour down.

The mouse swayed and collapsed, Destiny only just catching him.

Her hair was black, as black as the blackest heart, straight and heavy, and she suspected her eyes, skin, maybe even shape had shifted to contain this sudden influx of energy.

She glanced down at the unconscious mouse held in her arms.

“Well. Isn’t this just swell?” She sighed heavily, and started making plans.

Mad at Mouse Part 8

The Heartless swarmed in, and for a moment his world narrowed to the battle in front of him.

These Heartless were strong, and fast and extremely dangerous. Probably Natives.

Part of his attention was on the woman, waiting for an attack from that quarter, as she had to be powerful to control these Heartless, but most was evade, block, slash, cast.

A half second breather and he glanced in her direction. She had a snarl on her face, she looked furious, but she had yet to launch an attack in his direction.

Maybe she had no long range attacks?

Sharp claws came too close, drawing blood, and his attention snapped to the enemy in front of him.

Another three Heartless fell to his Keyblade, he took quick stock of the battlefield, dozens of Heartless remained but their attention was divided.

They were attacking the woman.

She wasn’t an enemy he realised with a sinking feeling. She wasn’t a fighter. The Heartless were wearing her down quickly.

The song, a spell? A status effect? Stun, or sleep, or maybe even confusion.

A spell he had broken.

One of the large bodied Heartless knocked her down and she went rolling, landing against the wall and not rising.

“No!” Mickey dashed forward, a single slashing movement from behind taking out the large body, and another dozen fell to his rush.

He cast cure, hoping it would be enough.

If he was pinned to one spot defending her, he knew the Heartless would overrun him, his advantage was his speed, mobility and aerobatics, he was not Goofy to take the heavy hits, he was not Donald with his barrier spells.

She took a shuddering breath and rose to her feet, a light axe clutched in her hands defensively.

Their eyes met again, and Mickey realised she was not much taller than he, and wafer thin.

She moved, blocking and diverting a hit meant for him, and she spun.

They were well matched, now they worked together. Neither stayed in one place for long, swirling and dashing, dodging and deflecting hits.

He quickly realised the Axe was not her weapon, she used it almost as a staff to block, or deflect, rarely did she used the head to wound.

Still, he could take advantage of the openings she created, he might be doing the main work of finishing these Heartless, but she distracted them and defended him.

What more could he ask of a civilian?

Then suddenly it was over. The Church was clear.

She sank to the ground, breathing heavily, and Mickey finally took a good long look.

She was darker than his first look had told him, streaks of grey in her otherwise white hair, a greyish tone to her skin where before she had seemed almost silvery white. And painfully thin.

Mickey knew his people, his world, tended more to roundness than some of the peoples out there, just look at Jack in Halloween Town to see the other end of the scale.

If she was of his people, he would be asking her to report to the infirmary for a check-up, and ensured someone made sure she was eating.

She took one last deep breath and looked up at him.

“Well.” It sounded like the start of a sentence but she didn’t go on.

“I’m Mickey, nice to meetcha!” Mickey declared, deciding to put his best face on the situation and offered his hand.

She glanced at his hand, before looking him in the eyes again and nodded, reaching forward to clasp his hand.

The World went Black.

Mad at Mouse Part 7

I hate heartless.

No.

That’s wrong. I don’t hate them. I hate killing them.

Keybladers might be able to send their hearts onto kingdom hearts, but I can’t.

I used to be able to fix them. Well not fix them exactly… but restore them just a bit. A tiny bit of heart is better than no heart at all, and it can grow with proper tending.

I used to be good at that.

I can sense his approach. He can’t be that far away. A few parsecs. A couple of days travel.

I will be dead by then.

I might not have a Heart the Heartless can steal, but that won’t stop them poking and prodding. I’m interesting, I’m different, I’m an odd mixture of powerful and powerless.

It’s easy to forget how to be human, how to be mortal.

It’s been a long time.

Another heartless down, and another was coming.

Mortals got tired. I had forgotten that. Forgotten how it felt to be tired. It was different from being without energy. Instead of the absence of power, it hurt, in a warm and fuzzy kind of way.

I grew up in War. Most of my memories of before are pretty dusty.

If I was going to die here, in battle, then was only one thing for it.

I opened my mouth, and sang the first thing that popped into my head.

“It is finished, he has done it,

death is beaten, heaven beckons me.”

The fighting stopped.

My World, my People, my Heartless.

I didn’t stop singing.

Delaying tactic. Whispered the sensible part of me. It wouldn’t last for long.

Please, let it last just long enough.