Spoiler: yeah it's a nightmare, sue me Perhaps it was all the talk of nightmares that made it so Take experienced one. The boy was tied to a chair in a dark room and he tried pulling away before his left arm was grabbed firmly and a scorpion was placed on it. Take tried to pull away his arm shouting, "No, stop! I'll control my emotions better. Good soldiers put their- aaah!" he felt the sharp sting a burning that hurt more than any dragon burn he'd ever experienced and looked down to see his arm fading into a black dust. He grabbed his arm as it was disappearing, the kid felt tears pouring down as he screamed, "What's going on?!" "Well, she did warn you..." Takehiko looked concerned as he tried to look up at the face, but more than his arm was fading away at this point. The scorpion turned into a ball of light, the hand was gloved, in black, and through the dark, red eyes peered through, "If I took your light, it'd kill you." Take reached out to try and grab the figure only for everything to go black, but not before he felt like his entire body was on fire. And an echoing laugh. Take sat upright very quickly, clutching his chest and breathing heavily. He reached into his pocket fairly quickly to grab his stone and just feel around it to make sure he was grounded, he was in reality. And there was an immeasurable feeling of relief as he did. Then the details of his nightmare began to disappear. He didn't find that odd, he never found it necessary to remember a dream in such details, it was better for him to move forward without thinking too much about it. He couldn't remember any words said anymore, just visuals. Just... a numb sensation that to his mind at some point was pain. Though he did remember the laugh. Takehiko got up from his bed and zipped up his jacket as his ears reached the loud conversation going on outside. He was fine with being a little slow, he needed time to wake up and didn't want to talk out there drowsy or anything of the sort. When the boy had everything ready, he placed on his bag and walked outside just for Tinarah to finish what she was saying. He blinked and processed what she last said and added, "Think of it more like... community service. Not looking for the recognition just going in for the relief of it... maybe the thrill."
"Takehiko." the boy repeated again, with more force. But he finally just waved and said, "Yeah, we should. Have a good night." and the green eyed boy headed back towards the rooms, and into his room before kicking off his shoes and finally getting to sleep.
When Qamar brought up him attempting to say foundation, he looked away embarrassed, and when she mentioned him being a little too young to adventure with them, Take did not like that in the slightest. He crossed his arms and didn't reply as he looked at her trying to figure out where she was trying to go with what she said. When she mentioned his name, he corrected her, "Takehiko. My name is Takehiko." he'd gotten used to this group calling him Take, but with the way she talked down at him, he didn't appreciate it. So she got the fun of having to say his whole name. When she brought up getting worked up, he almost wanted to comment about how that seemed like a regular thing, but he didn't, he simply said, "Well, stress does that. Did you actually eat? I know it's not healthy to eat straight before bed but starving doesn't help stress or anything."
Takehiko certainly was not expecting this conversation to go this route, but he listened anyway. When the pillow went flying and he could hear glass breaking, he raised an eyebrow and looked towards her just in time for her mentioning wanting to punch something. When she looked at him, he wondered for a moment if she meant she wanted to punch him. Maybe that raised his questioning whether in fact she was trustworthy. Then she apologized right away, and the switch in emotion was odd, but not unexpected. Then she was crying. Take was also worried about Aria's well being, but not to the point of being this upset about it. At least he didn't think. He could tell she was good at taking care of herself, he had no reason to doubt that she would make the right decisions, and even if she didn't... well, who made perfect decisions all the time? He tried to figure out what to address first and finally found a point he was comfortable with. He placed a hand on Qamar's shoulder and said,"You have a right to be concerned, but Aria's made it this far and is still alright. I trust her to make the right decisions, you should to. As for Torrin, well, I think he's so used to handling stuff on his own, he doesn't know how to have others help. But sometimes people don't want help, and even if you want to, you need to respect that people want to be able to make their own decisions." Take let go of her shoulder and shrugged a bit, "I also wouldn't take it to heart too much. Some of us have been in the same group since the beginning of this and still don't trust each other." he looked over in the direction of where Illiana had been, "Completely..." he looked back to Qamar and scratched his face, "But if I'm completely honest here, which I'd rather be. The first time I met you, you were freaking Tinarah out by having just walked into the bedroom. And every time I've seen you talking with people you've been trying to cram your way into friendship or bringing them into personal convos. I wouldn't... do that. You gotta make a fou... found... baseline... foundation! Foundation for the house first before you build it, ya know? Most people don't like to talk to... no offense, strangers, before talking about personal stuff. I know I'm not completely comfortable talking my homeworld without at least getting to know someone beyond their name and what they look like."
Take was grateful this was eased so quickly but when Qamar was trying to seperate themselves from their conversation, he was a bit confused why Qamar was leading him away from his room, but figured she must have just wanted an excuse to get away so he just walked with her and said, "I mean, I explained the stone earlier, there's not much else to tell. I don't think he made it on a particular day or anything, I think he just made it at a picnic or something and gave it to us. I don't remember it being anything big it's just more the association is all..." he continued to mumble on about it as they walked, just basic stuff nothing to spectacular. He was just explaining what he thought was a relatively normal day. Heck he even managed to mention smaller dragons flying about in a casual manner as if it was nothing. But he just used it as an excuse to help her get out of there.
Take heard the conversation escalating, and Illiana only contributing to the toxicity of the situation and he was starting to get a bit worried, and since he had taken off his jacket he was clearly in ready for bed mode, but with what was going on, he wasn't liking where this was going. He walked out in between the two holding his arms up and saying, "Woah okay, I was kidding. Can we not fight right now? Please? Especially over something involving Aria? I'm sure she wouldn't like it. And if it's more than just that we need to... well, we don't have to be friends but we should at the very least be in a cooperative mindset. And fighting when should all be trying to get some rest isn't going to help us. In fact, I'd say it'd do the opposite." Take wasn't looking at either in particular, he kept trying to look between them, "Maybe there's a reason he isn't telling you what this... particular skill is. Maybe it's better for less people to know about it than more. I don't know. But people keep things on the down low for a reason. Hopefully good reasons. Just... just trust each other. On a base level at least." he looked back at Torrin and said to him specifically, "Don't feel you need to ask help, but know that you can... cause you're not alone here."
Take heard some sort of conversation going on outside of the room and tried to listen in on it, but only really heard Torrin's part of the conversation clearly. He peaked out when he heard things starting to get a little more heated and he poked his head out and looked at the two, "Are you two having a moment out here? There are fourteen rooms and you could share it along with your side agendas in there instead of in the middle of the hallway."
Take heard Edna's voice break through everything and nearly jumped but held onto his cocoa easily enough. When she finished explaining the rooms Take looked over at Torrin again, he almost wanted to call him out on keeping secrets again, but he didn't know if that would go well for any of them. Takehiko finished up his cocoa and before anyone could say anything he replied, almost contradicting the last sentence he said to the three there, "Well, I'm too tired to keep worrying about this stuff." he faked a yawn poorly and continued, "I'm gonna hit the night, good hay." and his headed out of there, leaving the cup in the sink. Once he got down towards the bedrooms he closed the door and locked it. He never usually locked the door, but he knew he did poorly at composing himself there. The black haired boy sighed and put his bag down for the night and took off his jacket. He looked down at the wrappings on his left hand and unwrapped it, he flexed his fingers and was surprised it was healing so quickly. He decided it would be best to keep it on for another day.
The end of this shadow cluster was here. And there was (probably) no one more excited about it than Kaida. Considering she had started off nearly killed by the horde, kicked off this island by the crowd, and been expending most of her energy on them. So seeing them dwindle to nothing was satisfying. She was not a fool enough to think this was the end, but this was the end of this group. Slashing one more time with red slash, the shadows began affected by a mixture of time and light, and were frozen in this spots until they disappeared in a spectacular burst of light. Kaida saw a couple darkballs floating her way once she had offed the last of the shadows, and she turned to looked up at them. Her time aura still flowing from her due to her last attacks, the girl simultaneously stood still, was in mid jump, and jumped into the air. When she began hitting the darkballs, she went into an aerial combo, flying around and knocking out three darkballs in the air, and throwing one of her keyblades far away at a fourth darkball. Stabbing straight through it. Kaida landed on the ground safely and recalled her keyblade to have it. Word Count: 209 EXP Earned: 20 EXP Total: 860 Blessed Thief: 50 Munny Sweet Memories: 7 crowns Heartless Defeated: 44 shadows 4 darkballs Enemies Remaining: 42 Darkballs 41 Neoshadows
Melus had been reacting pretty negatively to when Lea had lost and disappeared, and when Luther ended up challenging the man to a final fantasy, she thought this was a hopeless case. This man got stronger the more others attacked, which may have been the reason why he decided to one on one, but Lea just fought this man and lost. She considered the old man the most competent of this team... not because he'd shown it but because he was a well seasoned keyblade master and just lost to this guy. As she watched the fight, taking a back seat, she kept herself pretty far back with her arms crossed to analyze the fight, and she began to notice a standard attack pattern. Luther would go hardcore on some illusion magic and Tango would focus in and react to his stuff accordingly. She had little faith Luther could win this. But she knew he could, if she dirtied her hands a bit. Melus summoned out her harp and walked along the edge while they were distracted and intensely in the fight, and Melus got herself up on a table in their hideout, if only to have a bit of high ground. She watched as Luther made a loud, busy, and focus claiming attack, and that was what she needed. Luther probably thought he could handle it himself. She didn't care. The brunette pushed her ponytail back, shifted her harp to the side and pulled back the string and three arrows of air formed. With a quick and strong pullback, the three arrows flew out quickly. One aiming straight for the back of Tango's neck, one for his back straight through his chest, and the other was aimed to hit his ankle, but accidentally went for the left knee. When the arrows flew, Melus lowered her bow and stared blankly at the two, if there was a look of anger from either of them, she'd just shrug. x
Melus had been reacting pretty negatively to when Lea had lost and disappeared, and when Luther ended up challenging the man to a final fantasy, she thought this was a hopeless case. This man got stronger the more others attacked, which may have been the reason why he decided to one on one, but Lea just fought this man and lost. She considered the old man the most competent of this team... not because he'd shown it but because he was a well seasoned keyblade master and just lost to this guy. As she watched the fight, taking a back seat, she kept herself pretty far back with her arms crossed to analyze the fight, and she began to notice a standard attack pattern. Luther would go hardcore on some illusion magic and Tango would focus in and react to his stuff accordingly. She had little faith Luther could win this. But she knew he could, if she dirtied her hands a bit. Melus summoned out her harp and walked along the edge while they were distracted and intensely in the fight, and Melus got herself up on a table in their hideout, if only to have a bit of high ground. She watched as Luther made a loud, busy, and focus claiming attack, and that was what she needed. Luther probably thought he could handle it himself. She didn't care. The brunette pushed her ponytail back, shifted her harp to the side and pulled back the string and three arrows of air formed. With a quick and strong pullback, the three arrows flew out quickly. One aiming straight for the back of Tango's neck, one for his back straight through his chest, and the other was aimed to hit his ankle, but accidentally went for the left knee. When the arrows flew, Melus lowered her bow and stared blankly at the two, if there was a look of anger from either of them, she'd just shrug.
Take was grateful that Aria helped him out but he kind of wished he could have handled it himself, it was a tricky thing. Some day he'd master it. But when she asked him if he needed to talk. He did need to talk, he just knew he shouldn't. He sipped his cocoa and looked around and saw Chrono. He felt comfortable explaining the situations to Chrono. But then Boreas was here. How would Boreas feel if Take admitted to eavesdropping on Torrin's private conversation. He felt like it would just end badly if he tried talking. It only helped stopped the situation when Torrin was about to walk into the conversation and Take shook his head, "No. I'm fine. I think this magitek stuff is just wearing me down and the fact it's still out there is keeping me on my toes..."
Take had only managed to listen to a brief part, and Torrin's revelation over why they wanted him involved, in order to get the realm of darkness to fight the Light Chaser. That seemed a legitimate reason in his eyes for Torrin to be annoyed, not liking the idea of being used. Heck, maybe even being cannon fodder. But what ended up really getting his attention was Torrin's sudden annoyance over a second... pure light? There was another princess of heart with them? That surprised him immensely. He could just look at Aria and tell there was something bright and pure about her heart. But another? Who was it? No. He couldn't take the time to speculate. This wasn't his job. It was clear that Torrin and Thallasa wanted to keep this information on the down low so no one learned about it that shouldn't. Before Torrin got back, he quickly snuck back into the house. The boy walked into the kitchen quickly and grabbed himself some more hot chocolate, he dished it out with no problem. But the boy seemed to be struggling with getting the can of whipped cream to go on top of the cocoa and he looked a bit distressed but refused to ask for help.
Takehiko was not expecting to be addressed and blinked a minute before saying,"The stone? There's... nothing particular about the stone itself. But the markings. My brother Iwao made one for all of my brothers, himself, and me. It's the only thing I really carry... around..." Take looked over and saw Torrin speaking quietly with Thalassa before they both seemed to leave the mansion to speak. Take was... curious why they were talking in private. Did they not want to kill the mood with something important? The green eyed boy sipped the rest of his cocoa before he placed the empty cup on the tray that all the cups used to be on and he said, "Excuse me a moment." and the boy walked towards where Torrin and Thallasa had gone. He tried to keep hidden though, cause he did not want to get caught or anything like that. But he felt he should be kept up to speed on what's going on even if they did not want to worry, say, Aria with something while she was focused on her nightmare.
The blonde was loving the fact there was far less now than there were before. She dared not even call it a horde anymore considering how scattered and confused the rest of the shadows were. If any were left together, they were more in scattered groups with one or two stragglers popping around trying to jump at the rest of her team. Kaida felt a lot better at this point about just diving in. She ducked down to try and get more of a boost from her jump, and leapt off the tree: jumping into a group of around twenty. Kaida began swinging around her keyblade, keeping up some of her well-trained footwork and trying to add in a bit of flair to her attacks. Not because she thought anyone was watching, but the brief release of a keyblade twirling upwards allowed her wrist to rest even if it was short. She slashed from all angles, going at a speed where if the shadows tried to count how many hits they were getting... they could probably could guess if they had the brain capacity to do so, but it would at the very least seem like there were more hits than they were. Soon, after a death of a thousand cuts, the first group poofed away slowly, one by one as she stabbed into them getting her last hits on each one. She ran towards a second group and immediately went in with firaga blasting towards the center. As she jumped in, Kaida seemed to just radiate the fire she blasted at them, she slashed even more with vigor. This time, she decided to try and end it with her red flash, where fire and ice clashed together at once just to make everything end in a colorful explosion. Kaida was most definitely having a good time now. Word Count: 308 EXP Earned: 30 EXP Total: 840 Blessed Thief: 20 Munny Sweet Memories: 7 crowns Heartless Defeated: 58 shadows Heartless Injured: Shadow 1/3 Invisible (Scarmiglione): 25/50 Invisible (Cagnazzo): 25/50 Invisible (Barbariccia): 25/50 Enemies Remaining: 322 Shadows 158 Darkballs 140 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 4 Invisibles (4 Reserved)
Take had not admittedly expected Aria to begin speaking about something urgent so suddenly, nor did he expect her to say he was one of the people she trusted the most here. He appreciated it a bit, but that wasn't his main thought. Instead, he listened to Aria telling about the nightmares and kept nodding throughout the conversation so she knew he was listening. When she finished speaking, he looked very concerned and said,"I know it's having physical effects on you.. but it's dangerous to not sleep. Especially with this magitek business going on. Are you sure there isn't another way?" The boy sipped his cocoa again to give the conversation a natural pause, finally reaching up and wiping off his nose before he continued, "Have you tried taking medicine so you have a dreamless sleep? Or... hm... idol carrying? That.. might be something specific to my homeworld." Take held his cocoa in his hands to feel the warmth for a little while before he explained, "In my homeworld, we need to keep the dragons from sensing us by limiting out emotions. But one of the hardest ways to hide it is when it's in sleep. When you're scared and in your head, you don't have people to help you out. But my older brother taught me idol carrying. Before you go to bed, you pick an item into your bedroom to focus on and say that item is coming with you and is going to protect you..." the black haired boy paused briefly before reaching into his pants pocket. He pulled out a small rock with a swirl carved into it. The swirl was painted red, "I bring this with me. I think of it like a good luck charm. One time I had a dream where a man came at me with a sword and tried to stab into my chest. But the rock made a protective shield around me. Or another dream I had where I fell out of the mountain and I saw the stone and remembered it was a dream and snapped myself out of it... ya know that feeling when you wake up and it feels like you fell a thousand feet? Well, I couldn't avoid that. But it kept me from panicking too long." He put the stone away and sipped the cocoa again, then continued, "It probably sounds odd. And... I don't know if it'd work in your case. But, it couldn't hurt to give something else a shot, right? Anyway, what you do is your choice. But we're here for you. Well, I shouldn't speak for others I'm pretty sure they're here for you. But I'm here for you." he gave her a reassuring smile, but stopped a little after and said, "I think I made that a little more confusing than it had to be."
Kaida rested herself on the tree and peered over as everyone started taking down these heartless very quickly. She was starting to feel like she was not pulling her weight and that only made her a bit angry at herself. Not like, Karina levels of angry at herself but maybe Aux levels. The girl began shooting fireballs and giant bells of thunder at the shadows with no mercy in her eyes as she attempted to off several more of these guys. Pipsqueak was back at it again with the coconut throwing to add to the projectile count, though it only seemed to stun while Kaida did the work. Word Count: 108 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 810 Blessed Thief: 90 Munny Sweet Memories: 6 crowns Heartless Defeated: 58 shadows Heartless Injured: Invisible (Scarmiglione): 25/50 Invisible (Cagnazzo): 25/50 Invisible (Barbariccia): 25/50 Enemies Remaining: 387 Shadows 209 Darkballs 155 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 4 Invisibles (4 Reserved)
"I just wish the council told us sooner. We went out at first to look for you. I don't know why the council didn't tell Master Atmos and Choma before we left..." Take looked particularly distressed by that part, but when Aria mentioned hot chocolate. Take's eyes lit up and he bowed his head towards Thalassa and said, "Excuse me for a second." before he quickly scurried over, containing his excitement as he said, "Thank you thank you thank you." before he took his hot cocoa from the tray and began sipping it slowly. Getting a little bit of whipped cream on his nose when he lifted his face, "It's very good."
Kaida continued on with her extermination of the shadows. Though she was out of magic at this point and needed to recharge for a while. She started using splattercombo and just constantly raking up her shadow death count with random combos and knocking some heartless into the air in order to combo them there too. Soon enough, she felt a familiar shadow jump on on her shoulder and quickly jump off to attack some other shadows and she said, "Pipsqueak, you came back! I'm glad you're alright." The shadow did not really respond to her, but that did not bother her in the slightest. Word Count: 104 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 800 Blessed Thief: 60 Munny Sweet Memories: 6 crowns Heartless Defeated: 58 shadows Heartless Injured: Neoshadow 2/15 Enemies Remaining: 1035 Shadows 297 Darkballs 314 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 12 Invisibles (4 Reserved)
Deciding to blast things into kingdom come this time, Kaida set herself seekermine on the ground around the horde and stood up into the tree. Although concerning where she got them, Kaida had little luna dolls made that sat over each mine. When the heartless began to go after the little dolls, Kaida sent a fireball in their direction, which made all the Luna dolls go into berserk mode and slam into the ground and set off the mines so many heartless went down in the fury of Luna. Kaida hoped Luna would never find out about this. She probably would. Word Count: 101 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 790 Blessed Thief: 30 Munny Sweet Memories: 6 crowns Heartless Defeated: 58 shadows Heartless Remaining: 1205 Shadows 300 Darkballs 335 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 13 Invisibles (4 Reserved) 1 Darkside Heartless Injured: Darkside 2: 681/1500
Kaida was feeling pretty good at this point about the horde and keeping it at bay. The blonde continued to use a bunch of projectile and area of affect spells to try and keep the horde from getting close. A couple times the girl willingly ran up towards her opponents to use abilities that would help to recharge her magic but otherwise she kept a distance. This time, she was moving fairly fast to pick off the edge of the horde. Trying to get the ones jumping at her more so than jumping towards them. It felt very satisfying to her to feel calmer about it. Word Count: 106 EXP Earned: 10 EXP Total: 780 Blessed Thief: 0 Munny Sweet Memories: 6 crowns Heartless Defeated: 58 shadows Heartless Remaining: 1313 Shadows 320 Darkballs 341 Neoshadows (1 Reserved) 13 Invisibles (4 Reserved) 1 Darkside Heartless Injured: Darkside 2: 786/1500
