Scene #7181: Excuse Me... What?

Owner	Pose
Xion	Castle Oblivion isn't the height of luxury, and it has an erosive effect on the memories of people in it, but... It's home for a select group. So select, in fact, they have numbered rooms! And chairs, too, but only 13 of them. Someday, perhaps, vertical mobility within the organization may be possble, but until then... It's really just the beings that call it home that lurk within the walls. It's rather strange that a red-aurburn haired girl with cut, damaged, and bloody Organization-wear would be meandering the halls to the bedrooms. "Going to have to mend my coat... Maybe I'll just borrow one of Larxene's..."
Roxas	One of the bedrooms slides open abruptly, the silvery weirdly retro-futuristic door opening as if somebody had simply wandered in too close to it. Roxas emerges from it, looking a little off-kilter. He's just a bit more unfocused than is ordinary for him, and it's hard to know what to /make/ of that. Fortunately, this isn't actually a traumatic encounter for him. He does not, after all, have either Sora's Heart or his memories. So the red-head... is just a bit out of place. Roxas comes to an abrupt halt outside his room, surveying what could be one of two people assuming a third weirdly similar girl wasn't added to the group. "Uh... Isn't Larxene's stuff a bit big for you, er..." "Namine?" He guesses, based on the length of the hair. "What's with the hair, anyway?" He wonders aloud, tugging lightly at a lock of his own illustratively.
Xion	The red-auburn haired girl waves as Roxas pops out of the door. "Oh! Roxas! Hey, Roxas." She calls, but stops short when he acts surprised. Black-gloved thumb and forefinger reach up to pinch her bangs. "Namine? No. I'm definitely not Namine." The girl has a shocked, awkward laugh. "I'm Kairi! Er... Sorta." Her look becomes conflicted. The girl leans over. "Roxas, it's me. I'm doing everyone a big favor - Namine especially. But it's a mission, too!"
Roxas	"Oh-- ohhh..." Roxas lowers his hand from his own hair, but just looks yet more confused at this development. An explanation /does/ occur to him, but he doesn't really think it makes a whole lot of sense... and he just botched a perception roll pretty badly, so he decides there's not much sense in making too many wild guesses. "Kairi?" He wonders aloud. The name is only meaningful to him in a very specific context. Then, "The person Namine used to be? Why're you being Kairi? Isn't that kind of... dangerous? I mean, more than usual. I mean... she /made/ a guy just to keep people off of her back about her old self." "Is this supposed to be a secret? Should we be talking... /not here/? Do you want one of my coats? ... Wait, who beat you up like this?" He throws out questions one after another, quite evidently as THINGS finally register to him in sequence.
Xion	"Kairi." A bobbing nod of her head. "The person Namine used to be." Slight considerace. "I'm being Kairi to stop something bad from happening. Riku's sick, but... Yeah, trying to help's going to be dangerous. It's probably going to be a really awful fight." "It's not a secret in the Organization. Terra and Xemnas know, Marluxia figured it out and confronted me about it in the hall, Larxene saw right through me and laughed about it, and Namine is the one who gave me Kairi's... 'My' memories. Well, it's sort of a cinderella spell? I wanted to be able to have precious memories of feelings, like joy and laughing. Everyone else remembers something, and... If Namine doesn't want to be Kairi, then I can be her. That way, she has a chance at existing again, too." The being beat up part makes her look down. "Oh, I, uh, hunted down Riku's partner, the man in the red coat, and Seifer and got into fights like Xemnas told me to." "He had this metaphor for heart smoking... anyway, you can beat the bad darkness out of people? So I had to tell them, so they'll help us beat up the guy. Seifer said he called himself 'Ansem, Seeker of Darkness', and..." Kairi snaps her fingers. "He's taken over Riku? And that's bad?"
Roxas	"I guess... all of that makes sense, mostly. Except..." Roxas leans up against the wall next to his door, lifting a boot to rest it against the silver-white surface behind him, "I think Namine just wants to be safe, and I don't think..." "I don't think that you can give the people on the other end of this, like Riku, what they /want/ by being Kairi. It's part of why we... you know. Hide out in places like this. We're all powerful, if we /wanted/ to we could figure out some way to live just like this out there. This would come with us, a little, but we could do it. The problem is that people want that 'original' person back, even if that means erasing the new person they made along the way." He makes a face, "No substitutions." "So if it's just beating people up to get the... weirdo seeker of darkness out of them, that's okay. But people wanting 'Kairi' back will probably be unhappy with you eventually for trying to replace her. If they could take 'close enough', we wouldn't have a lot of the problems we do." "... It's kinda weird that you can just beat the dark out of somebody, though. Shouldn't that just inspire more darkness?" He adds, perplexed.
Xion	"I mostly remembered doing things. Passions. So when I saw certain things and it filled me with these strange pops and jitters and groans and tingles, I wanted to know more. But I couldn't. I didn't have any memories of feeling like that. Me, Xion." She steps back to rest her shoulders against the wall behind her, closing her eyes. "I don't think it's going to work out like how anyone wants, but... If I want to be Kairi, I'm Kairi. I can be the entirety of her. I have all her memories, what she likes, how the voice in her head sounded like. Isn't that good enough? I can also be Xion. Maybe Xion's bigger than being 'just Kairi', but the hunger in my heart felt..." "... Better. It felt good to have these memories. They'll be mad, but if what they want is to kill Namine to bring back 'the person with all of Kairi's memories', then I can be that same person. I can use this power to help Riku." Kairi-Xion raises a finger. "Xemnas told me that a caring heart is what's required to banish the darkness calling itself Ansem. It's why the red coated partner and Seifer are important - they care about Riku. I don't think you can beat the darkness out of someone normally, though." Kairi-Xion droops, her hair returning to its shiny black as she does so, glove reaching behind her neck. "Otherwise, wouldn't I have even a little light in me? Seifer was really rough of a fight."
Roxas	"I'd say I get it, but I don't. Memories of feelings are still all I have to base... anything on." Roxas says, folding his hands behind his head and leaning back so that he's looking up at the ceiling. He heaves a deep sigh, and says, "Xion is Xion. Xion isn't Kairi. You can put the mask on, but you can always take it back off again. But you're a Nobody. Hanging onto this..." He looks down a moment to grin over at Xion, "Is what makes you stick around. Anyway, just because you took the memories doesn't mean they don't need Namine. They still need her body, you know? And... I don't know. It's pretty brave of you to paint that target on your back, but it's definitely going to make me worry." "And," he says, "what makes you think there isn't a little light in there? If I can have /so much/, you can definitely have a little. If you don't, feel free to just take some from me." "So what happens when you /do/ beat the evil out of Riku? And do you want me to get in on it? I mean... I would if I was there /anyway/, but I guess I just wasn't paying enough attention to be in the loop already."
Xion	"Well, I'd also say I get it, but I'm sort of..." Xion curls a bang aroud her index finger. "... think I'm playig it by ear?" Her expression tenses, pressure placed in her brow. A wince, near like taking a blow. "I'm good at masks, I guess. But you're right. Kairi's a mask I can take off. But dealing with Kairi's stupid cheesehead friends definitely makes me want to stay me, if it makes you feel better." She sighs, a forced nasal exhale into a emphatic 'ugh'. "Seifer really was trying to kill me, too. But not because of getting Kairi back. Just because he's crazy." Xion raises her head, eyes opening. "But I've got you, and everyone else. I'll be fine. I am pretty tough, you know?" She asks faux-cockily, while flexing a bicep for show. She deflates like a balloon silently flappering out air at the light-based question. "I can't call any up. Just an empty grey. And all the darkness I can leak."
Roxas	"I don't think that guy can do things in half-measures." Roxas affirms, regarding Seifer. This is completely alien to him, because his 'completely on' is still about half a person's worth of intensity unless it is focused on a very specific band of the emotional spectrum. "I wonder why all of those guys are like that, though. Riku. Kairi. Seifer. It's like everybody in orbit of what was going on with them ends up really messed up. Riku must have a family-- parents, and stuff like that. Right? Seifer seems normal for somebody who comes out of a Garden, though..." "You've heard of that other gunblade guy, right? He's like the exact opposite of Seifer. Kinda... Saix but actually professional instead of just using it as a shield?" He adds, shuddering on purpose to convey a sense of intimidation. Roxas pushes off of the wall to cross the hall and rest against the wall next to Xion, reaching out to poke at her bicep with a single finger, "You /are/ really tough, as Nobodies go. And if there's something all Nobodies are, it's tough. Even Demyx." Regarding her inability to wield Elemental light, he asks, "Even copying it off of me? Is there anything in specific that feels 'off' about trying? I mean... I shouldn't even be able to /do/ that. But you're an exception in other ways, too."
Xion	Xion laughs lightly at the poke, an empty affirmation and a ticklish response, before shrugging. "Seifer isn't so bad. His problem is that his heart's on fire - he's too hot, and he burns himself. He burns the people around him." "I felt Squall, though. I could see Squall's reflection in Seifer's eyes when I fought him. He cut my face, and when I cut his back, he got really... intense. Like pouring water on an oil fire." "I could see Squall, and his eyes sort of looked like mine in the mirror, but... Sharper." It's a decision, a determination that Xion comes to. "Yeah. It'll be fine." To show the elemental light issue, Xion raises her palm, red-purple magic wicking from her fingers. "I could probably cast a Demi with my eyes closed. But..." She focuses, and the wicking magic gathers into a ball over her hand and washes out. What's left is a grey orb, with a pale white center. Simply: A Ruin ball. "This is about as good as I get. It doesn't really feel 'off', this is what I crank up to. When I take it from you, it's just pillars and beams of the stuff." "We're all exceptions, Roxas. That's sort of step one of being a nobody."
Roxas	"On fire, huh...?" Roxas says, thoughtfully. It's not /quite/ his own experience, but it could be. With a little more reason to be angry, a little more reason to act on that anger. Though it would be of a different hue than Seifer Almasy's, for a certainty. His attention snaps back to the here-and-now when Xion decides to demonstrate her elemental problem. Roxas raises a hand to mimic her movements and the flow of her energies, his own light coalescing into a sphere of pale light. Like a tiny full moon sitting in the palm of his hand. It looks similar-- but the underlying aspect is different. After a moment of holding that in place he allows it to collapse, the sphere imploding on itself and disappearing in a flash. "If it feels right," he decides, a little more determinedly than his prior statements, "then it's probably fine." "And," Roxas rubs at the back of his neck, "it /is/ pretty nice of you to look out for Namine that way. I don't know if Kairi feels like Namine does to you, but she just seems like she spends too much of her time looking over her shoulder. I don't like it. Not that she does it, but that she's probably right to."
Xion	"Well, I think that's part of the problem with having a heart, Roxas." Xion steps off the wall. "Hearts can hate things for no reason. Can feel the 'wrong' way. If you're a certain way, why should that feel wrong? The reason why I think it's weird what's on my insides is because I'm wearing the mask called 'Kairi', and when I do, I remember having a heart of bright light." Xion can't help but laugh into sighing at 'too much time looking over her shoulder'. "Ha ha... yeah. Namine needs a break. It's a thing only I can do, you know?" She slouches her shoulders, waving a finger at her room. "I'm going to change, and probably grab a shower. I've got blood and bite bug all over."
Roxas	"Oh. No, I just thought it was bugging you. If it's just because 'Kairi' doesn't 'feel right' because of the memories you're using to be her, it's not a big deal." Roxas says, waving a hand back and forth in a 'don't worry about it' gesture. "But, about what you said-- Hearts don't hate things for no reason. It's just that sometimes their reasons are stupid, or wrong. But you can be stupid and wrong without a Heart, too. The reason is just different." As she declares that it's time for her to clean up and settle in, Roxas nods. He pushes away from the wall next to her, crossing back towards his own room. He replies, "Okay. We can talk more later. Be sure to drink a bunch of water, too. You're /probably/ more wiped out than you think you are." With a hiss, his door opens and shuts, and he's gone.