Salty & Sweet

The sky warmed from the usual blue into a fiery orange sunset, and one at a time the street lights kicked in to light the streets. Light poured out of the towering structures and sounds of laughter and friendly speaking flooded the town. No one could be seen walking the paths of the serene city, save for the shop owners and the tram driver, who drove on the designated path around the center of Twilight Town. However, up a distant path, three kids ran around and spoke quickly to each other before disappearing from sight up more inclining pathways toward the direction of the clock tower and train station. Such scenes were incredibly different from those in the World That Never Was, where the only colors were mere tones of black and white and the people were supposedly emotionless, heartless shells. I walked mindlessly toward a cream-colored bear with a pom-pom sticking up from its head floating inside an open shop. Demyx followed close behind, swinging his blue instrument as he strolled. Even though we were supposed to be on a ‘mission’, he seemed reluctant in doing so and if that were the case then I could probably get away with careening around the small town. When I approached the creature, it sent me a warm smile and cocked its head to the left.

“Hello there,” it said, the voice soothing and feminine, with a touch of almost childlike cuteness. “I have never seen you here before. Are you new to town?” Smiling at the bearlike creature, I nodded my head. Demyx lolled next to me, switching which leg he leaned against every so often but he remained silent.

“Yes,” I stated with a small smile. “We’re just passing through town. It’s such a beautiful place, and the sunset is just heavenly.” The creature nodded toward me and placed its paw against its cheeks dreamily.

“Isn’t it?” She – I was going to guess from the voice that it was a girl – floated out from under the shop and sat atop the burgundy counter. The little bear peered up at me with its squinty eyes and introduced herself. “My name is Elmina, and I am a Moogle who runs this Synthesis Shop here in Twilight Town. If you ever need anything, feel free to ask!”

A grin spread onto my lips. “Thank you very much, Elmina!”

Afterwards, Demyx and I parted ways from the female Moogle and the Tram Common area, heading in the direction of the Station Heights. While reluctant, after I’d asked a few times he finally explained what a Moogle and Synthesis Shop was. In short, a Moogle was a creature of an unknown clan who ran the Synthesis Shops, which in turn would buy, sell, or combine any items or weaponry. He mused, “I guess they’re helpful for those who like fighting, but, you know, for those of us who don’t we really don’t have much of a reason to use them. They’re pretty nice though, when they aren’t trying to take all your munny. Oh well, so is the world now-a-days, am I right?” I peered at him as we continued up the escalated pathway, my stare blank and confused.

“I don’t know,” I breathed. Demyx stopped.

“You don’t…?” He paused, and stared off at something around me before letting out a groan. “Oh man, they’re here!” I didn’t have a moment to ask “who” was here, because before I knew it little black creatures were popping up all around us. A grimace formed on my lips. What the hell? Demyx quickly yelled, “Alright, I guess here’s to start your mission! I’ll just watch from over here so I can make sure you know how to do this.” He backed away toward a large brick building, leaving me defenseless and powerless against said creatures. I sent him a glare, to which he furrowed his brows and asked what was up.

Dodging an attacking black rabbit thing, I shouted, “You’re just going to leave me out here to fend for myself against these rabbit things?! What kind of trainer…watcher…babysitter are you? I don’t know how to fight, there’s no weapon handy and I really don’t feel like dying on my first day of this!” Demyx let out a groan and pouted as he approached me, his aqua sitar handy.

He motioned to something behind us. “Use that if you don’t have anything.” I turned around and frowned.

“No way!”

“Why not?”

“It’s a fricken pole.”

“Correction,” Demyx grinned, giving me a slight push in the direction of the iron pipe. “It’s a metal fricken pole. And, right now, it’s all you have so you might as well use it. There’s no way I’m fighting all these things by myself! Plus, Saix will get pissed off if you don’t do anything seeing as this mission was supposed to be your training day.”

He smirked while I frowned in defeat, walking angrily toward the metal rod lying near a garage area. As I grasped it and spun the metallic pole in my hand, I heard Demyx roar, “Dance, water, dance!” When I glanced up, three water doppelgangers slid across the brick roads and attacked the black creatures, killing them almost instantly. My eyes when wide in amazement as most of them went down with ease. However, one escaped the third’s attack and it ran in my direction. Letting out a squeal of terror, I bounced around to try to make space between me and the dark rabbit. When my back collided with the brick building though, I squeezed my eyes shut, outstretched my arms – pole grasped in both hands – and repeatedly hit the enemy atop the head until I could no longer feeling the pole hitting anything. Peeking my eyes open, relief spread over me when no more of those things were in sight. However, I quickly noticed the ridicule swelling in Demyx’s eyes.

“Don’t.” I growled. “Say. Anything.” He shook his head, chuckling.

“You’re worse of a fighter than I am!” he mocked, and I glared daggers at the man’s thin frame. “I hope your magic is better or you’ll be completely worthless battle-wise!” He laughed and I growled, stomping over to him and whapping his head with the pole. Demyx cringed in pain as I smirked in accomplishment.

“Well, except for the pole,” I mused, proud to injure the causer of my embarrassment.

“Except for the pole.” He agree, sending me a grin. “But don’t expect to go far with that thing. If you had difficulties defeating a little Shadow Heartless, than no doubt bigger enemies will cause you some major issues!” My mouth formed an “O” at the mention of Heartless; those things we fought must have been the creatures Axel was explaining to me when we were heading to the Grey Room. While I remembered this, I noticed Demyx strolling up the rest of the pathway and I had to run to catch up with him.

We stopped for a moment once the two of us were outside the train station and I felt my gaze wander to the sunset once more. The colors radiated off the sun and burned the sky even more beautiful colors. From the Station, Twilight Town seemed to be even more beautiful. My eyes flickered to the clock tower, and I could just barely make out the three kids who I’d seen upon arriving their; they were sitting casually off the edge just below the actual clock. The sun reflected off their faces and I was able to make out a brunette girl, a brunette bandana-wearing boy, and a dirty blond boy eating what looked to be a blue Popsicle. Saliva slid down my throat and I licked my lips. I wonder what those taste like…

“Alright,” Demyx mumbled, stifling a yawn. “Let’s finish this so we can RTC.” Removing my gaze from the kids, I stared off at the mullet haired man.

“RTC?”

“‘Return To Castle’,” he answered. “After we see what you can do for magic, we’ll go back to our world, okay?” My shoulders instantly sagged. I didn’t want to go back there, where there was no colors or even all that much joy spread around. If anything, I wanted horribly to stay where I was and live in Twilight Town with the beautiful sunsets and worriless people.

But I had to nod and agree. “Sure,” I murmured, and if Demyx had caught the unhappiness and reluctance in my voice, he didn’t show it or didn’t care. He nodded and approached me.

“Okay,” he cleared his throat. “Everyone in the Organization has an Element, which we use when fighting. Each Element is unique to us and no two members have the same magic ability. Like, I use Water Element magic, Axel uses Fire Element magic, and so on. Even if you don’t have some weapon, you’re bound to have some magic. Just focus all your energy into trying to summon your Element.” I nodded my head and, just my luck, a few Heartless popped up in the distance. Demyx added with a grin, “I’ll leave you to those guys! If you need me, I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines!”

Yeah, right. I thought, but held my gaze on the Shadows. Sucking in a deep breath, I reached out my arm and focused all my energy in trying to summon magic. Power seemed to burn in my palms and for a moment I was convinced that there was a possibility that some form of super-cool magic would spew out of my hand and destroy the Heartless’. However, when the energy was release, a green light shone from my hand and instead of harming the enemies, I managed to cure them (not that they had taken any damage as of yet). I blinked in confusion and stared at my hand, before deciding to try again and hope that maybe this was just a cruel joke. However, no matter how many times I retried to summon magic, all that came out was any form of Cure and medical magic. I grimaced and looked back at Demyx. He shook his head and I could tell he was ready to double over in laughter.

“Wow!” he shouted, as I took to defending myself with the metal pipe. “You really are a worse fighter than I am!” Groaning, I quickly finished off the few Heartless and stomped over to Demyx. On the way back to the Tram Common area, Demyx spoke lively about his time in the Organization, how he’d liked the idea at first but hated having to fight Heartless or anything that got in the way of the goal of Organization XIII.

“What’s Organization XIII’s goal?” I asked as Demyx created a dark corridor back to the World That Never Was. He looked at me with a grin.

“To finish Kingdom Hearts, of course!” he shouted it, as if common knowledge. “Then we will get our hearts backs and be real again!”

He didn’t give me another moment to question him about Kingdom Hearts or more about their goal. How was this ‘Kingdom Hearts’ supposed to give back our hearts? And how are they going about creating it? What will happen after it’s made? No matter how hard I tried, more and more questions formed into my mind and I began to feel more in the dark than ever. Of course, this was only my first day doing anything in and for the Organization, but this feeling of confusion and being lost was less than ideal. I wanted to know who I was, where I came from, exactly what was up with this Organization and how I came to be in it, why I don’t remember anything, and on and on.

I looked behind me to study Twilight Town, thinking for a moment that I could just leave and stay here, never have to think about any of this ever again. The chance to be free of this nightmare before it had a chance to be turned into something it didn’t have to be. But I wasn’t that strong, yet, and I was unsure what would happen to me if I didn’t listen to these people so early in the ballgame. They could kill me, I thought with a frown and ultimately making my decision based off of that. My body moved backwards, allowing me one last glimpse of the sunset before I was completely immersed in darkness. I was so lost in thought that I hadn’t even noticed we returned to the Grey Room, however not so out of it that I could not hear Demyx obnoxious voice.

“…And you should have seen the weapon Raxle got to use!”

What am I getting myself into?