1730/Bugging the Waves

Bugging the Waves
Date of Scene:	05 March 2015
Location:	The Deeper Regions
Synopsis:	Xion asks Aqua for advice and answers.
Cast of Characters:	624, 630

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Aqua (624) has posed:
    Despite what the room description says, this is not at all a cavernous series of tunnels. Or perhaps it is, and we are simply above ground level right now, making it completely irrelevant for our needs. Aqua has been exploring-- the diminished (but still present) threat of the Heartless hasn't left her mind in the slightest, but rather than wander aimlessly, the knight without memories has taken to sightseeing the millions of worlds just waiting out there. And working near Alexander Academy, once in a while, to earn just enough money to scrape by, when adventurer boards aren't enough.

    Having called Aqua for a meeting, Xion would have been invited to a nice rocky cliff where she happened to be at the moment. Below the cliff is one of the massive oceans of the Multiverse, illuminated by beautiful, glowing, multicolored rocks deep underwater, while the sky itself shines with more stars than can be counted.

    It is warm out, not winter here. There is a Warp Gate on the cliff itself, and Aqua is sitting on the edge, in her casual clothes. Judging by the various signboards this is a bit of a tourist spot, but at this hour everyone's already gone home.

Xion (630) has posed:
    Xion knew she wanted to talk to Aqua, the Wandering Knight, because she had something that Roxas wasn't supposed to have. She had something that Xion certainly didn't have. While all three had the legendary weapon 'keyblade', each is different.

    And one of them certainly has a 'Heart'.

    And so the keyblade knight is accosted! Accosted by a teenaged girl in a dark coat. The warp gate is used, but it's not quietly that the dark-coated keyblader comes though, but more like a combatant, flipping through the gate and looking confused. "W-where are all the heartless?" She asks, swinging her simple blade left and right, looking confused. As she slowly relaxes, not seeing or sensing any heartless, she lowers her blade, looking out over the INSANELY ANIMU surroundings, and looks out over the starry ocean view.

    And she feels nothing. She looks to Aqua. "So, uh... I had a question." She begins, finally lowering her blade to point at the ground. "You need a Heart to be a keyblader, right?"

Aqua (624) has posed:
    "Oh, hello Xion. H-Heartless?" Aqua would take a look around-- had she stared at the waves too long yet again and lost track of her surroundings? No, it didn't seem so. And for once, the younger girl came in without using one of those dark portals, so it was unlikely they'd be ambushed out of the blue. The knight would remain content and relaxed, until then.

    "It's... just us here, I think."

    She wouldn't rise, but rather would invite Xion to come sit next to her, patting the ground there. "Come have a seat. The view's lovely. It reminds me of home, wherever that must have been." An uncomfortable pause will occur, as the Nobody asks her question. Aqua considers the answer carefully.

    "I'm not really sure. You two are the first Keyblade users I've met in a long time. The Keyblades... they can lock and unlock. They could do grave harm, or great good. I'd like to think they mustn't care about something like that and they have a greater story to them."

    She would look at Xion, curious. "Why? Have you met someone without a heart who has a Keyblade? If so, maybe they aren't that picky. But maybe it also means the person is lying about not having a heart. It must be a difficult thing to confirm."

Xion (630) has posed:
    Xion looks around, at Aqua's curiousity. "No, I mean... I used a portal. Heartless come through when people use corridors, right? Even if you're wearing a coat, because you're opening a corridor, the darkness leaks out. I thought that was this warp gate, you know, did." She offers, before nodding. "Oh, okay. Well, in that case..." She plops down where Aqua indicates, kicking her feet out over the edge slowly and staring blankly out at the view. "Oh, yeah, it's really..." She falters. Then rallies. "It's very a thing, yes!"

    She pauses, listening intently, before looking... disappointed. "No, that's not what I'm asking. I know the keyblade is powerful. What I'm asking is..."

    Aqua continues. Lying... About not having a heart?

    Xion places a hand against her 'heart', frowning lightly. "Is he lying...? Am I lying...?" She looks to Heart's Desire, the odd keychain dangling from the butt of the weapon. "... What does it mean to weild a keyblade? I know a keyblade is a weapon of the heart, but... that can't /really/ be. Can it?"

Aqua (624) has posed:
    "I don't know. Maybe the answer is different for everyone. When you think about it, maybe the Keyblade is your heart. It serves the same purpose. Humans use their hearts to fight the shadows and to stay safe. They can open and close it to others, and they can use it to open and close other people's hearts, with great effort. You can even use your heart to break another person's, with unthoughtful words or actions," is Aqua's answer, a bit of a vague, if pulled by the hair explanation to something she doesn't really know much more than Xion about. The Keyblades certainly are very mysterious weapons, with a lot of interpretations.

    "What does it mean to wield a Keyblade... I don't really know. I guess if I kept going on my earlier analogy, I would say it means you have greater power than others to make your heart's desires real. Whether or not you know about them, or..." Perceptive, she didn't miss the cue. It seems she accidently called her a liar-- and someone else, whom she has suspicions on now. "Whether or not you even know if you have a heart. To such a person, I would say... does it really matter? If you are you, and you exist, everything else is just details."

    She turns to look at Xion fully and head-on, directly in the eyes. "Is there something you're not telling me? I'll understand, if you don't want to talk about it."

Xion (630) has posed:
    Xion looks down, at her keyblade, and stares at it. A swarm of sensations flood her body, as she processes the Keyblade Knight's words. She understands some of them, but others are too complex, and the wash of emotive sensations makes it impossible for her to process. Her eyes water, and she wipes at her eyes with her black gloved hands.

    "Th... that maybe makes sense. But it still... It can't be true. Not for me." She finishes wiping away her eyes, laying Heart's Desire across her legs. "I'm..." She begins, before simply flopping back on the ground behind her, her hood balling up a bit and her hair floofling out before falling over her eyes and being dirtied by the ground. She moves her arms over her face, crossing them and using her forearms to hide her face, leaving her nose and mouth exposed. And she just lays there for long moments, as Aqua talks.

    "You're right. I do have Heart's Desire. That's my keyblade. That's its name. But it's not... It's not a heart. I'd know. I wouldn't..." She trails off again, the dead-on look being met as she slides away her arms.

    "I'm not a real person. I'm... not anyone. I'm nobody. Xion was just a name I got given. Inside me, there's... lots of people. Weak, quiet people. I don't have a Heart. People like me don't get those. All the people I am, that are a part of me, none of them have hearts. I don't know how to /feel/ things, I get... My body feels, but I don't /get/ it. What does it /feel/ like to dream? That swordsman shadow lord told me it was like starving, but I know what starving feels like. It's... Heart's Desire - my keyblade - is a keyblade. It's /real/. It's /mine/. But... If I don't have a heart, then..." She trails off.

    "Nothing makes sense."

Aqua (624) has posed:
    There it is. The truth. Not one Aqua is sure she can help with, though. Can a person exist without a heart? Xion doesn't look or feel like a Heartless, not even one tiny bit. She's -crying-, even. So either it's possible to exist without a heart, or Xion has... issues, would be the mildest way to put it, that she needs to work through. The blue-haired girls awkwardly scratches the top of her head for a moment, before lowering that hand to put it on Xion's head.

    "I'm sorry about the thing I said. I didn't mean to call you a liar. I've never met someone without a heart who wasn't a Heartless, so I'm not really sure how to help you. I want to tell you that you should celebrate being alive, because we both know what happens to people when their heart gets taken out, and that doesn't seem to have happened to you, but... maybe it would be empty."

    How to approach this. Baby steps, maybe?

    "I think you might have a heart, though. You sound really confused. Conflicted. Those are feelings too, even if they're bad ones. Having a heart means having to deal with it all, the good and the bad. It's true you're the first person like you I've ever met," she admits, without stating outright how odd it is to claim to be made of multiple people, "But you don't sound any different than a normal person to me. So who's to say if you're real or not? You're standing there, talking like you have feelings about your situation. That's good enough for me. Maybe it doesn't make sense now, I have trouble with that too. But it's alright. As long as you can keep using those legs to move forward, eventually you'll figure it all out. I know you'd probably prefer to shine a light on all of it right now, in one fell swoop, but that's not how people work. As long as what you want is to make sense of it though, you'll find a way to make it happen someday."

    Blind optimism. She sighs. It tastes so bitter, and she can't remember why. The blind leading the blind. At least, the pep talks seem to come naturally.

    "Having friends who want to help along the way doesn't hurt, either."